


Barton Farm

by ScarfLoor, vinnie2757



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Character Death, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, basically everyone in the mcu, because sam/nat is where this boat be at, but you know what a year has passed and i grow weary of bruce/nat so you know what you get instead, everyone gets to be happy i swear to fucking god, i will stan for the bartons, ill add everyone else as they appear, its nothing major, minor character injury, ocs are minor background elements to further claura pre-farm, the dog lives forever tbh thats the twist, there is minor bruce/nat but its losers failing to flirt, while barney barton may be referenced he will not be making an appearance, youre gonna get the backrground development of sam/nat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-26 16:59:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 139,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3858154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarfLoor/pseuds/ScarfLoor, https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinnie2757/pseuds/vinnie2757
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story for the Bartons and the family they accumulate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Date and Home Sweet Home

**Author's Note:**

> I saw AoU when it came out here (England) last week and i immediate text my #1 loor 'TEAM DAD TEAM DAD TE A M D A D' and we've talked about nothing since. It's been a week. I'm still crying.

_2015_

Clint doesn’t leave the house for three weeks. He takes the phone off the hook and jokes about taking his hearing aids out so he can’t hear them hammering on the door. It’s a slight exaggeration, because he takes the kids out, and does the groceries, and when Laura’s water breaks, he’s got the truck started before she’s even got the words out of her mouth. Natasha tells them Nathaniel is fat, and Clint translates for her.

‘She’s happy for us,’ he assures Laura with a warm, dry kiss pressed to her crown, his hand slinking over her shoulder to trace wonder-shaking fingers down the round curve of little Nathaniel Pietro’s cheek, and she feels his smile when the tot gurgles and grasps blindly at his dad’s finger. ‘It’s been hard for her. For all of us, you know?’

She does know, and can’t let go of Nathaniel to touch her husband, but she does tilt her head to bump her crown against his mouth, giving him the acknowledgement he needs.

‘D’you wanna sleep?’ he asks.

‘I want to go home,’ Laura replies with a sigh. Nathaniel stops mouthing at Clint’s finger and settles against her breast.

‘I’ll check with the nurses,’ he promises. ‘He looks more like you than Coop did.’

‘He’s got your mouth,’ she teases, and glances up at him.

His battered face smiles back at her, tired, bruises almost totally faded, and he looks so much older than he did all those years ago. But there’s a sparkle in his eye that she knows so well. There is life in him yet.

* * *

_ 2015 _

A month passes of blissful  _silence_ . Clint works on the farm, finishes the renovations on the sunroom, spends lazy afternoons on the back porch with her in the rocking chair, Nathaniel in her arms. She likes those lazy afternoons the best, because he lies sprawled across the decking in varying states of dress depending on the heat of the low-hanging sun, working idly on a mobile for Nathaniel. Cooper’s was made of wooden birds and Lila’s of glow-in-the-dark stars, and Nathaniel’s is felt hot air balloons.

‘Those stitches aren’t even,’ she tells him, without looking.

‘I’ll have you know they are,’ he replies without missing a beat.

She smiles, and rocks the chair a little.

Having Clint home for the earliest days, the hardest days, is a blessing and a curse and she could ask for nothing more. He was abroad when she had the first two, dealing with foreign threats and would-be super-villains and he had more to worry about than his wife and her unborn baby. The world was at stake, and she understands that, and she remembers Nick coming to see her when she’d returned home, Cooper in tow and Lila comfortably in her arms, sat in this very rocking chair. He’d said something about a mission in Abidjan or Azerbaijan or Agadir or wherever, and she remembers sending Cooper inside, remembers putting Lila in the pram at her side, remembers getting to her feet and standing toe-to-toe with him, with Nick Fury, and telling him to go and fuck himself if he wasn’t bringing her husband back.

He had been unable to promise her that, and she’d banned him and his from the property until Clint Barton walked through that front door and dumped his shit all over the floor, dripping blood everywhere.

Clint hadn’t made it home for another week, but home he came, in the middle of the night, sneaking through the door like he could avoid her for a few hours more. She'd been too grateful to have him back, to see him watching their newborn daughter with that soft, perfect expression on his face, to be mad.

‘I’m sorry,’ Clint had said in the morning when the relief had worn off and the anger had begun to set in, kissing her cold cheek, ‘I didn’t mean to take so long. Is she alright? You? Both of you? It was okay? The birth, I mean. You’re both alright?’

‘We’re fine,’ she assures him, even though she knows he'll know she's lying, and scans him with a quick flick of her eyes. She didn’t have him for this long to not know the shift of his weight when injured, the rise of broken-rib breaths, the twitch of dislocated fingers. ‘You made it out in one piece?’

‘There was trouble,’ he’d said, and sighs pleasantly when she presses against him, warm and girl-soft and smelling of baby powder and fresh cotton, ‘there’s always trouble.’

‘Will it follow you home?’

‘No.’

He always says that. Some divine blessing lets him be right most of the time.

‘Laura?’ he asks, and she snaps to, finds him shading her and Nathaniel from the sun, his blond hair a dusty, shining halo and she knows him too well to think him an angel.

No angel stubs their toe and drops their coffee and grumbles about it quite the way he does.

‘I’m alright,’ she tells him with a shake of her head. A lock of hair falls across her face, and he tucks it back behind her ear before reaching to take Nathaniel from her. ‘You alright with him?’

‘Yeah,’ he assures her, settles his boy in his arms like he’s made to fit. She can think of nowhere safer for their son to sleep. ‘I wasn’t there with Coop and Lila, so I want to make sure I get my time with Nath, you know?’

She does know.

‘You’re a good dad,’ she assures him. That’s what all this is about, after all. ‘You’ve got more important things to worry about than just us, you know.’

‘There’s nothing more important than us. Than you and the kids. We got Lucky, we just need the picket fence.’

She laughs, and tells him he’d never finish it, because someone would crash into it and break it, and he supposes that’s true, doesn’t protest at all when she pulls him down to kiss him.

* * *

_2015_

Thor arrives with a loud crash out in the yard. Lila, drawing at the table, looks up to see the man with the hammer that stood on the Lego striding towards the house, and yells for her momma. Without any preamble, Thor lets himself in and takes a seat at the table, carefully setting a cumbersome-looking box in a carrier bag on the table between them.

‘You are drawing,’ he says, and Lila gapes at him. ‘Art is a fine subject to study! Steven studies art!’

She gapes some more, and then shoves a handful of crayons and a piece of baby pink paper over to him; when Laura makes it through to the kitchen, having been changing Nathaniel, she pauses to marvel over Thor sticking his tongue out and trying to keep within his crooked lines.

‘Hello,’ she says, and Thor leaps to his feet.

‘Mrs Barton,’ he says, and she crooks an eyebrow, grins at him in a way that reminds him a little, in some disconnected, subconscious thought, of late nights at Stark Tower, of Clint too tired to laugh at jokes but wanting to respond all the same. ‘The last time I was here, I.’

He pauses, flushes high in his cheeks, and Laura bites down the urge to pat them.

‘I broke a mug,’ he says, ‘by accident. I believe Tony left it on the floor.’

‘I hear that he does that,’ she agrees, and he picks up the bag, thrusts it at her.

‘I bought you replacements.’

Replacement _s_?’ she repeats, bemused, and accepts the bag.

Lila is still gaping at them, and stands on her chair to look at the bag her momma’s unwrapping. There’s a set of four absolutely _ugly_ mugs inside, neatly packaged with an expensive price tag still attached.

‘Thor,’ she sighs, in that overwhelmed and utterly baffled motherly tone he recalls Jane using as recently as last week, ‘you didn’t have to. We break mugs so often ‘round here, you know.’

‘Jane taught me to replace items that I have broken,’ he tells her, and looks at his purchase fondly.

Laura carefully tears the cardboard to pull a mug out. It’s truly hideous. Of course he likes them.

‘Thank you,’ she tells him, sincere, ‘that was sweet of you.’

He beams at her, and flushes even darker when she lifts onto her toes to kiss his cheek.

* * *

_2015_

Nathaniel’s first word is ‘dad.’

‘Three for three,’ Clint says with a lazy smile that belies the pride in his dimples and crow’s feet. The age slips from him then, and he almost looks like the boy Laura had first fallen in love with. But he has enough stubble to consider a beard and plasters stuck haphazard up his arms and on his temple.

‘Three for three,’ she echoes, and tucks herself under his arm. ‘I’m glad you were here to hear it this time.’

‘I’m glad I had my aids in,’ he laughs, and Nathaniel looks at him from his block puzzle on the floor, beams with a spit-slick mouth and bright, bright eyes. ‘Nathaniel,’ he coos, and Nathaniel babbles.

It’s not words, not really, but Clint replies anyway, talks to him about absolutely nothing. Nathaniel babbles and claps his hands and calls him ‘dada’ over and over again until he almost makes Clint’s diatribe fall short.

* * *

_2015_

It’s late in the summer when Laura wakes to Clint cursing up a storm and muttering, ‘ _Language_ , _Clint_ ,’ to himself in some ungodly combination of a gruff manly-man voice and a falsetto, and she shoves up onto her elbows to find him glaring at his jeans.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asks, because it’s – it’s – seven-thirty in the morning, and since when did Clint wake up so early on a day off?

‘These jeans don’t fit,’ he says, ‘they’re too small.’

‘Small?’ she asks, and looks him up and down. He’s put a couple of pounds on, maybe, because he’s actually eating food again and not cereal bars and pre-made sandwiches, but he’s not lost a single atom of his abs, or an iota of definition anywhere. ‘What do you mean?’

‘This,’ he says, and steps into them.

They refuse to go up past his thighs.

‘They were not this skinny when I bought them,’ he says, ‘they fitted perfectly.’

She laughs, and climbs out of bed to go and tug hopelessly at them. He rocks up onto his toes before falling flat on his feet again, and the jeans don’t budge an inch higher.

‘See?’ he asks, when she frowns. ‘They don’t fit. They’ve shrunk.’

Frowning some more, she ducks down, and pokes his belly when she hears the tongue-clicking tut of him opening his mouth to make some witty comment about sex.

‘They haven’t shrunk,’ she tells him, ‘the fabric’s not got that pull it gets when it shrinks. Your legs are fat, that’s what the problem is.’

He gasps, outraged. ‘They are _not_!’ he exclaims, and she chuckles. ‘They are not, you liar! My legs are fine!’

She presses a kiss to his belly before getting fully to her feet, and she tugs at his belt loops. He obligingly shuffles forward.

‘You’ve got thunder thighs,’ she tells him, teasing, ‘it’s all those acrobatics. I see them on the TV sometimes, you know. When the news crews manage to catch you flinging yourself off buildings. I have a screenshot of you doing the splits in midair. It’s my desktop background.’

‘I have to get some use out of those acrobatics,’ he shrugs, hands sneaking under the shirt she wears to bed – his, he might add. ‘Never heard you complaining before.’

‘Who said I was complaining?’

His fingers are just under the waistband of her underwear, her mouth an inch from his, but before they get a chance to meet in the middle, the front door slams.

‘Uncle Tony!’

Groaning, Clint pulls away and grumbles about Tony Stark letting himself in. As he finds a pair of jogging bottoms instead, ones that will definitely fit, because they are designed to be loose, and fat legs or not – and they aren’t _fat_ , it’s all muscle, feel it if you don’t believe it! – he asks who gave Tony a key.

‘I never did,’ Laura assures him, and he sighs.

‘I know. I didn’t, either, and the kids don’t have keys. Ah, it doesn’t matter, so long as it’s just him.’

Tony has that wild, trapped look in his eyes when Clint meets him in the kitchen, and they’re the same age, give or take a year, but the age wears on them differently. The trauma and the pain and the past wears on them differently. For a moment, they eye each other, and then Clint’s moving to the coffee machine.

‘You know, the tractor’s been playing up recently. Can’t get it to start. I think there’s something clogging up the fuel pipe.’

He ignores Tony as he gets mugs and spoons and the creamer, goes through the easy motions of making up three coffees. He leaves two on the side – one black, for Tony, one with creamer for him – and takes the third out, tossing over his shoulder that it’s for Laura.

When he comes back downstairs, the coffee is gone, and when he looks up through the window, he finds that the garage doors are flung wide, and he can make out the glint and glimmer of the arc reactor in Tony’s chest behind the tractor as he takes his mind off whatever it is bothering him.

* * *

_1994_

It’s late, far later than Laura really wants to be out, because God knows this part of town isn’t _rough_ , but it’s rough enough that she doesn’t like being out alone after dark. She steps away from the wall any time she comes to an alley, and waits until crossings before crossing the road even though there’s very little traffic. It’s a nice night, a light breeze, no clouds, warmth clinging to the stinking tarmac, and if she wasn’t alone, she might enjoy a stroll.

As it is, she wants to go home, put instant noodles on and go to bed.

‘Meetings,’ she grunts to herself, shifting her bag closer to her body, ‘I’ll be glad when they’re over.’

She walks a few more streets before she sees another soul. A man, walking his dog, a happy-looking golden Labrador without a lead, and she hesitates for a second before daring to look at the man straight-on. For all she knows, happy as the dog looks, trotting along and looking at everything it can, it could be an attack dog, designed to take down lone women on empty streets at ten-thirty of an evening.

But then she sees who’s walking him, and relaxes, incrementally. She’s been bumping into this guy for _weeks,_ in the supermarket, in the library that once, in Starbucks last week where he bled on the floor after downing five espresso shots at once and slamming a fifty on the counter.

He glances at her, apparently feeling her stare, and she looks away. They pass, and she glances back, can’t keep herself from looking at his arse; its looks just as nice in low-hanging jogging bottoms as it does in that tight whatever-it-is he’d been wearing.

‘Glad you see you’ve stopped bleeding!’ she calls, and he laughs loud, whistles to the dog before turning back.

‘You noticed that, huh?’ he asks, and laughs again when the lab comes and sits on his foot. ‘Aww, Lucky.’

He rubs the dog’s ear anyway, grinning at it.

‘Only because someone fainted,’ Laura teases, and steps forward when his gaze snaps back to her. His eyes are a nice bluish-green, like distant waves on a rainy day.

‘What a shame,’ he says, but doesn’t sound at all like he thinks that. There’s the faintest trace of broad, Iowa country-boy in his voice, the faintest tug on the A in shame, and she smiles.

‘You always walk your dog this late?’ she asks, because she doesn’t want to end the conversation that hasn’t really started. ‘Can I pet him?’

His – the man’s – eyes light up.       

‘Course you can,’ he says, smiles wide, shows the faintest gap in his teeth, probably where he’s been knocked about a few times too many. ‘He loves being pet.’

She hikes her slipping bag against her shoulder and crouches to give the dog – Lucky, was it? – a thorough petting with ear and belly rubs and tickles under the chin. His tails wags hard enough to bruise his owner’s calf, and she is utterly unapologetic.

As she straightens up, having pet very inch of Lucky, his owner’s belly rumbles, and he laughs, embarrassed, puts a hand over it.

‘I guess I’d better head home,’ he says, still grinning that dopey grin. He looks so young with a smile; though he can’t be more than his mid-twenties, he looks barely more than a teen. It’s adorable, almost. ‘Get myself fed, and him too. Have you got far to walk?’

She glances over her shoulder, bites her lip; she’s got a couple of alleys to walk through, and she’s not sure she’s ready to part company yet.

‘Not far,’ she says, ‘but – you know, I know a good pizza place. If you. Wanted to get pizza.’

Lucky perks up, rears onto his back legs to try and lap at his owner’s face. Laughing, he pushes the dog back to the ground, rubs his head.

‘I’m sorry, Lucky just really loves pizza. Called him Pizza Dog for a while too ‘cause of it. ‘Course, I like pizza, too.’

Lucky barks, as if in agreement, and Laura smiles.

‘Well, then,’ she smiles, ‘I’ll show you the way?’

‘Lead on.’

As they walk, she tells him where they’re headed, and Lucky races off. Maybe he can smell it, maybe he heard the address and knows it.

‘Hang on,’ he laughs, and races off after the dog.

‘Wait up!’ she calls, and he skids to a stop, whistles and whistles again, shriller than the first time, and waits until the dog has returned to him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, crouching as she catches up to hold the dog in place. ‘He’s not normally this excitable in the evening. Whatcha smell, boy?’

Lucky’s tongue lolls, and his owner seems content enough with the response, getting back to his feet to walk side-by-side with her again.

‘Sorry about that,’ he says, rubs the back of his neck. ‘I’m Clint, by the way. Never introduced myself.’

He sticks a hand out between them, and Laura takes it awkwardly, her arm too close and her wrist cramping.

‘Laura,’ she replies, and smiles.

Clint’s grip is strong, firm, callused across his fingers and the ball of his hand, and it’s warm and dry. A good, working hand. If she hadn’t seen him with a quiver and a bow, she’d have thought him a labourer, maybe in one of the factories across town.

‘Laura,’ he repeats. ‘A nice name.’

She’s twenty-two, it shouldn’t make her blush. But it does.

* * *

_2015_

Clint has not met Bucky – Nat has told him stories, told him half a dozen during that long weekend she spent groaning on the couch and petting Lucky’s head whenever he rested it on her belly – so when the – the – what even _is_ Bucky? Is he hero or villain? Is the line so easily divided these days, because Nat has straddled it for so long she complains about the wedgies every other day, and he’s waded the waters himself and a bunch of other metaphorical clichés he can’t be bothered to really deal with right now.

But! There Bucky is, on the front porch, not _hiding_ behind Steve, because Bucky doesn’t hide, but he is in an unfamiliar location with people he doesn’t know, and Nat is in plain view on the stairs, towel in her hair and jeans and T-shirt fiercely nondescript, and they’ve had their fights. Nat has given him trouble, and Clint recognises the expression of “oh God, I don’t want to have this shit happen again, God save me” on Bucky’s face rather intimately.

The moment drags, and Steve waits patiently.

Clint steps aside and gestures them in with an easy-going, ‘you’re late, Cap. Expected you at lunchtime, Laura’s gonna be mad, you know that, right?’

Steve laughs and shrugs out of his jacket. Nat continues down the stairs and through into the kitchen, having deemed both Steve and Bucky to be absolutely no threat. Or perhaps she has, Clint can almost never tell these days, and she’s just keeping herself to herself for the sake of the new paint in the hall.

Bucky lingers on the porch.

‘You standin’ out there all day, kiddo?’ Clint asks, and opens his mouth after there’s no response.

‘You can’t adopt him, too!’ Nat calls from the kitchen, ‘Steve’s got dibs!’

Both Bucky and Clint look at Steve, who shrugs helplessly.

‘Someone’s got to get him up to speed.’

‘Give him an hour with Coop,’ Clint laughs, and figures he’ll leave the door for Bucky to get. ‘Come in when you’re ready, my wife makes the best marble cake you’ll ever eat in your life. How I didn’t get fat I don’t know.’

‘You are fat!’ comes Laura’s laugh from the living room, where she pokes her head out, Nathaniel balanced on her hip. ‘It’s all that old age creeping up on you. You were complaining about your jeans yesterday morning.’

‘What’s that?’ Steve asks.

‘I couldn’t get my jeans over my thighs,’ Clint complains, and they disappear into the kitchen, with Nat audibly goading him with rude names.

It leaves Laura and Bucky alone in the hall, and he stands there in the doorway, foot half over the threshold for several seconds.

‘You must be Bucky,’ she says, smiles. Nathaniel gurgles and presses close to his momma, but he doesn’t have the faintest trace of fear in his eyes. Bucky's stomach churns, uncomfortable, but he can't tell what, exactly, is making him feel nauseated. ‘Steve has told me a lot about you. All good things, I promise.’

A moment passes, and then she adds, ‘well, _mostly_.’

She winks. Bucky chances a smile. It's not a comfortable smile by any means; it's uncomfortable and shaky, but it's there.

‘Come on in,’ she tells him, ‘I’ve made lemonade and Clint’s lying about marble cake, I haven’t made any. I made pound cake instead, it was much easier, but if you’d like marble, I can do that for you. I promised Cap I’d find a recipe book from the 30’s to make him some good old-fashioned cookin’, but I still haven’t quite got there yet. Having three kids is hard work – well, I say three, it’s more like thirteen these days.’

Bucky’s weight shifts onto the foot in the threshold, and his body swings in with it. Almost fully in the house now, she offers him the run of the place.

‘Before any of that, though, you need a haircut. Honestly, has Steve not taken you to the barber’s he goes to? I’m surprised at him.’

‘No, um. We haven’t really – well – I’ve not been – out. I’ve had – there’s been – ‘

He can’t seem to find the words, so Laura crosses the hall to rest a hand on his arm, smile gentle.

‘It’s alright,’ she tells him, ‘you’re safe here. No one can find us without knowing where to look. It’s just us Bartons, and the rest of the Avengers now, I suppose. Couldn’t keep them away if I tried. But seriously, let me give this little tyke to his daddy, and then I’m cutting that mop off.’

She disappears without further discussion into the kitchen, and Bucky stands waiting, listening with a private grin to her telling Steve what a nuisance he is, honestly, not giving his best friend a haircut, honestly _Steven_.

He struggles to rein the smile in when Laura reappears without warning, and she catches the smile before he can fully smother it. She smiles at him, gestures to the stairs with some explanation of it being easier to tidy up in the bathroom, and he thinks he might be alright.

* * *

_2012_

Clint makes it home stinking of sweat and blood, bruises and scrapes on every inch of skin it seems like. Lucky had heard Nat’s car pull up outside and was set on barking at the crunch of gravel, the key in the door. Laura refused to hope, eyes still on the low volume new reporting about the Manhattan clear up project, showing hazy images of the Avengers in action behind it all.

‘Honey, I’m home!’

‘He’s got no broken bones,’ Nat calls. ‘His ankle is sprained and he needs a bath!’

Laura wipes under her eye, checks her reflection in the glass of the cabinet and then heads to the front door to greet them.

‘You’re home,’ she sighs. ‘Nat, you’re staying too?’

‘No, no, I’ve got some work to do on the PR for this disaster, and Tony won’t do it. I have a couple of field missions to see to after, too, so I won’t be around for a while.’

‘You never mentioned the field!’ Clint exclaims, lets himself be passed over to his wife, shifting his weight so he’s leaning into rather than away from her. ‘Tell Fury I think he’s a sunova bitch.’

‘Noted.’

Nat leans in to kiss her cheek, before heading out the door. When it’s shut and the car’s pulled away, Laura lets her hands roam. Clint’s get fiddly, reaching down her bra to retrieve his ring, and she laughs as he tugs on the chain. As he detaches the ring, she rocks up onto her toes to kiss him, humming against his mouth.

‘I’ll be having this back,’ he hums, and slots the ring into place before looping his arms around her waist and pulling her flush. ‘And I’ll be having you later.’

She grins, bites at his lip. ‘You will, huh? You need a bath first, mister, and the kids have missed you. Lila was asking if you were on the TV, and I - I told her no. I didn’t want her to see. Coulson told me about Loki, about what happened. Said until they gave the all-clear I shouldn’t let you in. As if I wouldn’t know my husband wasn’t himself, ha! How is Coulson?’

Clint pulls away from her, fractionally, just enough, and sighs. ‘Loki killed him. I - Nat and I were - dealing with me. If I’d known –’

It feels like a physical blow, but having two children has taught her how to power through agony, and Clint needs her.

‘Don’t blame yourself, honey,’ Laura whispers, pulls him back in to press kisses to his jaw and neck. ‘You aren’t to blame here, you aren’t at fault.’

‘It could have been me,’ he whispers, choked, his fingers clutching bruise-tight against her hips. ‘I could have killed him.’

‘But you didn’t. It wasn’t you. You’re home now, stop thinking about it. You’ve got a two-year-old desperate to see you, and a four-year-old who needs your help with a jigsaw puzzle. Worry about S.H.I.E.L.D. later. Home is what matters now.’

Laura is not very good at emotional support when it comes to things like this, because she doesn’t get it, but she knows Clint, and knows what he needs her to say and do. So she does all of it, gets him naked and in the bath, teasing her fingers over his scalp, finding all the scabby, dirty parts, dancing along the vertebrae in his neck until he’s drifting, until his chin drops onto his chest and its only his feet braced against the far side of the tub that keeps him from slipping. She kisses his ear, whispers that she loves him, and leaves him to rest.

* * *

_2015_

‘Hey, listen, kiddo,’ Clint starts, and Wanda shoots him a look. He grins, settles into the chair opposite her, leans forward to put a hand on her knee. ‘It’s gonna be rough, trust me. I’ve been there, on the other side.’

‘The other side,’ she echoes, and sniffs derisively. ‘We saved you.’

We, he thinks. We, we, we. His heart aches in a way it hasn’t ached for years.

‘You did,’ he agrees, ‘and they’ll ask. They’ll ask all of us. We’ll all say the same thing. We’ll tell the truth, tell them what happened. You’ve got nothing to fear.’

He smiles, and she reads him as best she can without the magic and the powers.

‘If it helps, I’m a shit liar,’ he tells her, ‘can’t lie to save my life.’

She smiles then, and it’s blistering.

‘Liar,’ she says, and he flicks her knee, gets to his feet with a groan.

‘You’ll be alright,’ he promises, rubbing at a hip he’s positive he’s cracked. ‘When it’s all over, you should come with me to the farm.’

‘The farm?’

She looks dubious, but Nat calls him to the door before he can reply.

‘Think about it,’ he calls over his shoulder, and then the door slides shut, leaving her in solitude.

When she next sees him, he’s washed the blood and dust out of his hair and his face is blooming yellow and purple and a greenish-blue that looks very uncomfortable but matches his eyes. He’s talking intently on the phone, bouncing on the balls of his feet, and he whirls in a peculiarly graceful arc on one foot when he hears the clack of her shoes.

‘Hey, listen, I gotta go,’ he says, and his grin is so serene, like the voice on the other end is the soft lap of waves on the shore. ‘I’ll call you on my way home, though, okay? Say g’night to the babies for me. Yeah, yeah, I know. It’ll be late. Probably early. Depends on how many reporters are out there. Well I’m not above climbing out a window; I deserve my own bed in my own home. Ha-ha, yeah, well, we’ll see about that. No, no, I promise. Yes, I promise! Alright, I really need to go. I’ll call you later.’

He glances at Wanda, stood patiently waiting for him.

‘I love you,’ he says into the phone, apparently judging her no threat to – to what? His masculinity? His privacy?

He smiles again, flush creeping across his cheeks, and he hangs up.

‘Hey, sorry about that,’ he grins. ‘It was – ha-ha, well. How was it?’

‘Not – bad,’ she says, and crosses to the bench he gestures at, tucking her skirt under her as she sits, ‘they listened to what I had to say.’

He throws himself much more ungainly onto the bench beside her, limbs everywhere and looking relaxed, at home. He’s not in the least; she doesn’t need to be able to read him to know that he’s posturing, faking comfort to pass himself off as being utterly in control, of being the top dog.

‘I told you so,’ he hums, and his smile is genuine, if a little strained.

‘You did tell me so. They said that they would speak to you in particular.’

‘They did,’ he agrees, smile slipping. ‘I told them what happened. Told events as I saw them. And I’m – you didn’t get in my head, so I had the most objective view, I guess. I wasn’t compromised.’

‘You were,’ Wanda murmurs, ‘I couldn’t get in, but I could see. She’s very pretty.’

He smiles, draws his legs back towards him, rests his hands on his knees. ‘She is. Prettiest woman I ever met.’

‘You don’t wear the ring.’

There isn’t even a tan line where it could have sat, obvious when he raises his hand to look.

‘Kind of defeats the purpose,’ he laughs, ‘if you could see in, you know why I don’t wear it. I’m heading out tonight, to go back. Come with me.’

‘The farm,’ she whispers, tasting the words again. ‘I – does she know about me?’

‘Why would she?’ he shrugs, and then considers it, runs a hand through his hair. She watches the way it springs back into place, each strand catching the overhead strip lighting and shining barley-gold for a moment. ‘I suppose, if she watched the news. Was all that on the news? I haven’t looked. After – the news always knows, I suppose. They’ll probably run a story. We’ll do damage control like always, it’ll be fine.’

She tries to see in, but there’s parts that are blocked, like he’s holding the door shut against her, but he doesn’t seem to realise he’s doing it. There are black smudges on his memory, on his perception, and she runs her mental fingers over them, feels the lashing pain that forces her away.

‘So?’ he asks, apparently totally unaware she’d been trying to breach his defences. She doesn’t believe it for a second. He was letting her in, or at least, letting her think he was letting her in. ‘How about it? We have far better beds. And the water should be hot again now. The kids have been in bed for – for – well, they’ve been in bed long enough.’

He looks at his phone for a moment, and she leans to look; the background, semi-obscured behind the lockscreen, is of two children with dark hair and broad smiles hugging a golden Labrador. She glances at his face, and he has that look in his eyes.

Her father used to look at her and Pietro like that.

‘Clint?’

‘Hm?’

He stows his phone away and gets to his feet, cracking his back and rolling a sore shoulder.

‘I think I’ll come with you.’

He smiles, extends a hand. She looks at it for a second, with its calluses and open sores and still-filthy nails, and then smiles, takes it, lets him pull her up.

* * *

_2015_

There’s not a week where there isn’t _someone_ appearing out of nowhere. Once, Clint mentions this to Fury, who, lounging on the back porch with a glass and looking remarkably more comfortable than Clint has ever seen him, tells him to shut up.

‘What’ll happen, Barton?’ Fury shrugs. ‘You just said it yourself; at any given moment, there are two Avengers – old or new – here, and what’s left of S.H.I.E.L.D. are coming and going. I don’t know if you know this, but Tony hid one of the Iron Legion in the shed with the tractor, and we’ve got eyes on the place at all times. If anyone comes, I very much doubt you and whoever’s here isn’t going to be enough to take them on. And if you aren’t, well, I’m sure we’ll be able to get here soon enough.’

Fury is wearing a pair of Clint’s sunglasses, the joke ones Lila _insisted_ he absolutely _had_ to have last time they went shopping. She said they complimented his hair.

They’re shaped like parrots.

Fury doesn’t seem to notice.

‘Besides,’ he says with a measured sip of his drink and Clint is sure he locked the liquor cabinet. ‘Vision likes you and your family. You’re exactly what he seeks to defend.’

‘Where did you get the whisky?’ Clint asks him.

Fury smiles behind the glass and tells him the lawn needs mowing again.

* * *

_2008_

A few months before Nat comes home from Iran with a hole clear through her belly and grumbling to herself in Russian about a ghost story, Lila is born in late Autumn, with more drama and fuss than Laura will later think was  _entirely_ necessary, with rain pattering against the windows in the S.H.I.E.L.D. hospital. Laura calls Clint a thousand names, most of them incredibly rude, because Clint is currently somewhere vaguely European, or at least, he’d mumbled something about Europe when he told her he was going abroad on a mission, and therefore, he is not there. He missed Cooper, too.

She thinks he’s doing it deliberately.

(He is, but he doesn’t mean to. Nothing terrifies him quite like fucking up with his children.)

When he comes home, Lila’s already home with her momma and her big brother, Lucky sleeping, as he had with Cooper, next to her cot. He checks in on Cooper first, smiling a little to find the boy, barely a toddler, asleep in his bed with the multi-coloured zebra Nat bought him for his first birthday wrapped tight in his arms. He looks content enough, nightlight shifting from green to orange, and Clint smiles again, pulls the door shut without disturbing him.

He can hear Laura breathing in the master room, door ajar and bedside light sending a shaft of light to the toecaps of his boots. Sighing out a gentle laugh, he considers, briefly, going to turn the light off, but she’ll wake, he knows, and he has more important matters to attend to.

Bloody and sweaty and in dire need of a bath, he slips into the nursery, redecorated in pastel pinks and creams ready for their baby girl, and Lucky’s head pops up at the smell. Clint presses a finger to his lips, and Lucky shakes his head, dropping it back onto his paws.

God, he thinks, stepping up to the cot and peeking in, God, she’s _gorgeous_. Laura hadn’t sent him any pictures, because he’d told her not to, not wanting to compromise the mission by being utterly enamoured of his newborn.

‘She’s pretty, isn’t she?’

His gaze shoots up; Laura’s at the door, Lucky at her feet. She’s exhausted, in one of his shirts and what he’s fairly positive are his boxers, and he feels no guilt in thinking she looks like shit, because Lila’s barely a week old, how could she not look like shit? But she’s smiling, absolutely content. If he was a romantic sort, he might say she looks complete now that he’s home. Her family is in one piece again, all under the same roof.

‘She’s gorgeous,’ he breathes, and turns back to Lila, fingers resting on the rail. He wants to touch her, but his nails are filthy, fingers stained with blood and dirt and soot, and she looks so pristine, so perfect. ‘Did I wake you?’

‘No,’ Laura assures him, and comes to stand the other side of the cot. ‘No, I was still awake. She doesn’t wake as much as Coop did, but she’s louder. It’s easier to be awake.’

‘I can take over tonight,’ he offers.

Lila fidgets, turns towards him, and he smiles.

‘She’s got your smile,’ Laura tells him. ‘I think it’s the trend.’

‘Coop’s got your smile.’

‘Yours.’

He looks at her, eyebrow raised. She grins at him, hooks a finger into the collar of his suit and tugs him in to kiss him.

‘Welcome home,’ she whispers against his mouth.

* * *

_1994_

Dinner is nice. Clint is nice. He tips two hundred-dollar bills so they let him bring the dog in, and he doesn’t even flinch about it, as if he’d thought they were twenties.

‘You know that was two hundred bucks?’ she asks.

He shrugs. ‘When it’s just you, you tend to save up a lot.’

She stares at him, and he gestures at the table by the door, so that if Lucky needs to go out, he’s got quick access and Clint can see where he is.

‘People keep trying to steal him,’ he says, ‘he bites anyone who gets too close that he doesn’t trust, of course. But I like being able to see him anyway.’

‘He bites?’

‘Only bad guys.’

She feels peculiarly honoured by that; Lucky didn’t seem vicious in the least, and Clint must trust him an awful lot to not give him a lead, and he seemed quite content to sit at their feet, tail wagging lazily against the chequered lino. They’re the only people in the restaurant right now, and the music is quiet, soft, a radio playing in the kitchen as they prep the last order of the night. They’d been in the process of cleaning up, but they know Laura by name, and they make an exception for them.

Which is nice.

‘I bet this place is heaving at dinner time,’ Clint says, and Laura jumps, realises she’s been staring at him.

‘Yeah,’ she says, leans back and fiddles with her napkin. ‘Yeah, I always try to come here at least once a week, you know? It’s so nice. I haven’t had time for the last couple of weeks, meetings at work have been running so late I’m barely out before they close.’

‘What do you do?’ Clint asks, and he looks like he’s genuinely interested.

‘Nothing nearly as exciting as you do, I’m sure. I’m just a clerk at this little office over a pet shop on East 12th, you know?’

Though his eyes never leave her face, she can see him run through a map in his mind, walk the journey.

‘Yeah,’ he says, when he’s located it, ‘I know the place. I bought Lucky’s collar there, I think. Didn’t know there was an office up there.’

‘We don’t advertise too much,’ she says, ‘we do good business without it. Loyal clientele and all that.’

He asks her more questions, boring, mundane questions about typography and filing systems and work hours, and she almost thinks it’s weird.

‘I’ve never had a desk job,’ he tells her with an embarrassed chuckle. ‘Before the – job – I have now, I was in the circus.’

‘You’re joking,’ she says, and slaps his arm.

‘Absolutely not,’ he grins, ‘I was an acrobat.’

She can believe it, if she’s honest.

‘What do you do? Now, I mean,’ she asks.

But he smiles, and turns his head in time for the kitchen door to swing open and their pizza to arrive. Extra large, pan crust with pepperoni and peppers and three kinds of cheese, and he normally just has pepperoni, but she insists, so he picks the peppers off before giving a slice to Lucky, who sits and chews nicely whilst they eat.

‘You never answered me,’ she says, quiet, after a slice or two have been downed.

‘I’m in security,’ he says, and offers her a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

He’s not _lying_ , but he’s not telling the whole truth. She watches his eyes, but they’re giving nothing away.

‘Is it fun?’ she asks, ‘dangerous, I bet.’

‘It can be. I’m mostly in the vantage points.’

‘The arrows,’ she nods, remembers them attached to his hip like a holster that day in Starbucks, ‘so you’re like, a sniper?’

He gives his half-finished pizza slice to the dog, and doesn’t look at her for several moments.

‘Something like that,’ he says eventually, and he looks _old_ when he meets her gaze again. ‘Can we talk about something else? Tell me about the pet shop.’

She racks her brains for something worth telling, and eventually tells him a story about an over-excitable puppy that she saw a month or so ago when she was on her lunch break, who’d managed to knock over a stand of treats and had demolished three packets before they could stop him. Clint laughs, and his foot moves to rest against her chair leg, brushing against her ankle.

* * *

_2015_

When Nathaniel is maybe six months, Nat lets herself in through the bathroom window. Clint has his aids turned low; it’s late, he’s exhausted, and Nathaniel doesn’t settle without a lullaby.

(Laura warned him each time, with each of their children, that if he started something, he better be willing to do it every night, because they will absolutely _not_ settle without the routine, but neither Cooper nor Lila seemed overly bothered about a change in routine. Clint suspects that this is because he was in and out of their lives, what with Stark and then Thor and all the missions Phil had sent him on,  but he’d been here almost every day for Nathaniel, excluding a few pressing engagements at Avengers HQ. Paternity leave or not, he is morally obliged to show up and help face down minor terror threats, given that his ward is there. Not that Wanda needs his help.)

‘Clint?’ Nat hisses, and he continues humming, hand in the cot, fingers running over Nate’s hair, down his cheeks, the same soothing motions he does every time. He finds himself checking his pulse regularly, and grins every time he does.

Nathaniel often uses his dad’s fingers as a dummy, and Clint doesn’t mind over-much. He’s had worse things than his son’s slobber on his fingers in the past.

‘In the nursery,’ he replies, trying – and mostly succeeding – to hold it in a tune so that Nathaniel doesn’t notice.

She appears in the doorway, keeping the door between her and the cot; Clint looks, and she looks like _shit_.

He mouths a curse, and turns back to his son.

‘Can you settle, please?’ he asks, but Nathaniel starts fussing again. Pulling a face at Nat, Clint leans in to pick his boy up and balance him in the crook of his elbow. ‘There’s a good lad, good boy, come on now, sleepy-time now.’

Nathaniel’s head drops against Clint’s shoulder, his eyes half-lidded and focusing on nothing at all. Clint continues humming and gestures with his free arm to lead Nat down to the kitchen.

‘Are you alright?’ he asks, moving effortlessly around the dark kitchen to put the under-cupboard lights on and make up a bottle for the tot.

‘I found him.’

Clint freezes, and Nathaniel paps at his face, worried but not understanding. Kissing his son’s fingers, he finishes up the bottle and passes it over. Once Nathaniel’s settled with it, sleepy and idle, Clint settles himself in one of the chairs opposite Natasha at the table.

‘You found him,’ he repeats, and Natasha watches her almost-namesake for a few moments.

‘Yeah. He’s – he’s in Alaska.’

‘Wrestle with a bear?’

It’s a paltry attempt at levity, and Natasha is about as impressed as he’d expected.

‘The lullaby worked,’ she shrugs, and offers him a bruise-purple smile.

‘Nat,’ Clint sighs, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

In the silence that follows, Nathaniel finishes with his bottle, not that hungry, and Clint rubs his back, watches him to see how he reacts. The boy settles, slow and steady, against his chest, and soon he’s breathing deep.

‘He even snores like you do.’

Clint grins, settles Nathaniel a little better against him. ‘His nose isn’t anywhere near as broken. It’s been – four times, now?’

‘Six.’

He considers this, and Natasha watches them.

‘You’re better with him than you were with Coop.’

‘I’ve had practice now,’ Clint laughs, quiet. ‘I messed up, though. Kept singing him lullabies, so now he won’t settle without one. Laura warned me, and hasn’t stopped rubbing my face in it.’

‘You deserve everything you get,’ Nat sniffs.

He snorts. ‘Don’t you start.’

She smiles at him, a little more genuine now, and the exhaustion sweeps over her face, over her body.

‘Clint,’ she says, ‘I’m – I don’t know what to do any more. Every time I get close, it’s – it’s like I’m being pushed back twice as far.’

He reaches across the table with his free hand, and she meets him halfway, laces their fingers together.

‘Let him do this himself,’ he says, quiet. ‘Let him work it out on his own. Don’t keep chasing him. He’ll come home eventually. He knows we’re here, knows this is the safest place on earth for him.’

Something crosses Nat’s face, and it makes him proud, in some weird, backwards way. It reminds him a lot of the girl he met all those years ago, in that cold, sterile corridor, looking at him with such amazement, like she couldn’t believe the stupidity of the words pouring out of his mouth.

‘You trust him with the kids?’

‘You don’t?’

‘Lila’s boisterous,’ Nat says, frowning a little. ‘It’s not that I don’t trust _him_. It’s _them_ I don’t trust.’

‘We’re here,’ Clint assures her. ‘I honestly don’t think that Bruce could be in this house with them and lose his cool. If anything, it’s probably better that they’re boisterous, you know? It’s more natural, more like home. If we can get Bucky out of his funk, we can get Bruce out of it. But I’m not going to go halfway around the world looking for his footprints like some green Bigfoot. I won’t do it. If he wants to come here, he can come here himself. He knows where we are.’

Nat sighs, leans back in her chair.

‘I suppose so,’ she agrees, because they both know Clint is right.

Nathaniel grumbles, and Clint runs a hand over his hair before getting to his feet.

‘I need to get him into bed,’ he says on his way to the door, ‘guest room’s still made up, and we should have enough hot water. You know, Tony’s been talking about getting us a better generator. Self-sustaining, like Avengers Tower was. Lesser scale, of course, smaller. He hasn’t stopped complaining about Bruce using all the hot water.’

 ‘I think I’ll stay down here for a while,’ Nat tells him, and he glances back to find her chin-in-hand, staring out of the kitchen window. ‘I’ll be up later. I need to think some more.’

‘Think in the bath,’ he suggests, and crosses back to kiss her hair. ‘Don’t fret so much, he’ll be fine.’

‘I know,’ she sighs. ‘Thanks, Clint.’

‘It’s what I’m here for.’

* * *

_1994_

Clint walks her home because that’s the nice thing to do, and at the front door to her apartment building, he lingers, as if unsure.

‘Nicer than my place,’ he says, and Lucky’s ears go flat, as if upset.

‘It’s just a studio flat,’ she tells him. ‘You could see if you like.’

He would like, it’s written all over his face. But he says no.

‘I’d better not. Work, y’know? Wouldn’t want it to. Interrupt.’

She supposes so, and leans down to press a warm hand to Lucky’s head, scratching behind his ears gently. His expression turns blissful, and he settles at Clint’s feet. When she straightens, a Moment starts. It’s like the romcoms she catches on the TV sometimes, kissing for the first time in the rain. But there’s no rain and Clint’s mouth tastes of pizza and that Heineken he’d drunk, and she wants nothing more than that for an eternity.

‘Mm,’ he sighs when they part, ‘that was nice.’

‘It was,’ she agrees, surprised at herself. She feels winded and her face is burning. ‘Very nice. I’d better get in. It’s late and you’ve got that pizza to walk off.’

‘Are calling me fat?’

‘Of course not. I just don’t want you to get into bad habits.’

The smile she gives him is smoking hot, burning him from the belly out.

‘Call me,’ she says, rooting in her purse for a pen before scrawling her landline number on the inside of his arm, along the veins barely visible. ‘When you get home. These streets can get rough.’

‘I drank five espresso shots at once,’ he reminds her. ‘While bleeding. I think I can handle rough.’

They can’t be worse than the Tracksuit Mafia, anyway. He handles worse in the S.H.I.E.L.D. offices on a daily basis.

Hell, he handles _Coulson_ on a daily basis. He can handle thugs.

‘Call me anyway,’ she says, ‘for my peace of mind. It’d be just my luck to meet a hot guy with a nice dog that’s just what I want and he gets stabbed in an alley.’

‘I’d walk it off,’ he tells her and steals the oncoming lecture from her mouth.

(He never does get to call her, because S.H.I.E.L.D. finds him first and her number gets washed off with the blood.)


	2. Good News and Bad Dreams

_2012_

Coop is five when the Battle of Manhattan happens. Momma won’t let him watch the TV and watch the news coverage, telling him with that downturned mouth and quiet voice she has when she’s very, _very_ mad that he must _not_ put the news on. Laura smiles when he eyes her, because it’s the same defiance Clint says she has on her face when he tells her not to do something. She’s learnt over the years to not do it anyway, because he only ever tells her not to when he has good reason.

She watches the news in the kitchen, away from Coop in the lounge, who’s watching cartoons on Disney XD or whatever it is, and bounces a fussing Lila on her hip. The toddler doesn’t understand just yet, doesn’t recognise her daddy on the TV, doesn’t understand the implications of the reports running alongside the footage from Manhattan.

‘Oh _God_ , Clint,’ she breathes, and Coop glances over his shoulder at her choked sob.

‘Momma?’

‘Coop, honey, come get your sister, please? Momma needs a minute.’

He scrambles to his feet, putting his Lego down to go and get Lila, helping her waddle back to the lounge, putting her down by the colouring books. He hears Momma rush upstairs to the bathroom, and he turns the volume on the TV up. It’s not often Momma gets upset like this, and he rubs Lila’s head when she babbles incoherently.

‘It’s okay!’ he assures her, and turns the colouring book to a fresh page. ‘See, this is an octopus, look at how cool he is!’

‘Her!’ Lila exclaims, and reaches for the pink crayons, ‘her octopus. Her.’

‘Her,’ Coop agrees with a smile, and casts a look to the kitchen TV.

Momma only gets sad when Dad’s in trouble, and he glances to the door. Surely he can – he can go to the kitchen, right? Just take a quick peek? He’s not supposed to go in without Momma or Dad or Aunty Maria or Uncle Phil or maybe even, rarely, the cloudy days where everything is so quiet and still, Grandpa Nick, not without one of them there with him. There’re things that can hurt him in there, Dad says, sharp things that could make him hurt and awful lot. Dad’s hurt a lot, and Coop doesn’t want to disappoint him.

But Dad’s _out there_ , he knows. He’s in Manhattan. He’s fighting to save the world from the aliens! He’ll be on the TV and it’s been weeks since he last saw him.

So he pats Lila’s head again and she babbles happily, scribbling roughly inside the lines of the octopus, and Coop inches closer to the kitchen door. There, on the counter, is the little TV they watch in the morning, when Dad’s home and wants to check in on any clear-ups or leaks or whatever it is he’s been doing. He likes knowing he’s done his job, Coop supposes. Likes hearing the reports of zero civilian casualties and saved hostages. Cooper likes them too; his Dad works hard to keep people safe, after all, and it’s nice to see his work recognised, even if he himself is not.

He inches closer to the TV until he can see it; it’s only small, and the image is a bit grainy. But he sees the explosions clear as day, sees Captain America running past the crew and pausing only briefly to tell them to vacate to safety! Coop pumps his fist; he likes Captain America! Dad’ll be alright if Cap’s there! There’s Aunty Nat, doing super-cool flips and tricks and Dad says that it takes a lot of strength to do things like that. Coop loves Aunty Nat more than he loves breathing, and he hopes she’s okay.

But there’s no _Dad_. No sign of him.

‘Dad,’ he whispers. ‘Dad, where are you?’

A car explodes, and the camera jerks up, shaky, zooming in. There! There’s Dad! He’s fighting too! He stabs an alien with an arrow, yanks it free before whirling around and shooting, knocking another one out of the sky. Coop’s nails hurt his palms, he’s clenching his fists so tight. Yeah! Go, Dad!

The woman reporting says something about a traitor, says something about a report of violence in Germany, about the Avengers, and there, there’s a blurry, camera-phone picture of Dad. He looks so – so –

Suddenly, Coop doesn’t want to be in the kitchen watching the news report of the battle, and he scrambles back to the living room, throwing himself onto the rug next to Lila, grabbing his Lego and pulling them apart to rebuild from the beginning, just in time for Momma to come back down.

‘You kids having fun?’ she asks, scratchy and she’s been crying.

Cooper bites the inside of his cheeks, but he manages to smile up at her. ‘Yeah!’ he says, ‘yeah, Lila’s colouring!’

‘That’s good. Colouring’s nice,’ Momma says, and leans down to kiss their heads, rubbing Coop’s back. ‘Do you want a milkshake, honey?’

Coop licks his lips. His throat feels too dry, and he nods, says please.

‘Thank you, Momma.’

She nods, and straightens up, turns to head to the kitchen.

‘Momma?’

 She turns back, smiles. ‘What is it, sweetheart?’

‘Dad’s gonna be okay, isn’t he?’

‘Of course he is. He’s got Aunty Nat with him.’

* * *

_1998_

‘Clint, you can’t just – ‘

The look he gets shuts Coulson’s mouth with a snap. They stand there watching each other for a moment, and then Coulson looks away, to anywhere but the seething rage taking human form not two feet from him.

‘Listen to me,’ he tries, knowing that Clint almost definitely _won’t_. ‘I didn’t know either. As far as I know, no one who was involved in this knew. We were all on the same page. If Fury knew -  ‘

‘Of course Fury knew, how could he _not_ know?’ Clint snarls, and Coulson fidgets.

‘ – Well, Fury knew, then. And he kept it from us for a reason.’

‘Because he knew _damn well_ that I would refuse the mission if I knew.’

‘Oh, absolutely,’ Coulson agrees with a fervent nod. ‘But there’s a _reason_ for it.’

Clint shoulders past him and slams a fist against the door. ‘Either follow me in or fuck off, I don’t care which.’

Coulson stands there, but when the door opens, he doesn’t follow. Clint steps in, and slams the door behind him.

‘Barton,’ Fury says with an easy smile that slips from his face when it isn’t returned. ‘What brings you to my office?’

‘You know _exactly_ what brings me to your office, _sir_.’

Fury nods, because of course he knows; neither Clint nor Coulson were being particularly quiet, and Clint hasn’t been quiet since they got back.

‘Do you want to just get it all out of your system now?’ Fury asks, ‘before I say anything more? I was due a refurbishment in this office anyway, so feel free to break everything in sight, if you like.’

Clint knocks the in-tray off the desk, just to be a prick.

‘She’s a fucking _child_!’ he hisses, and takes a breath. He will not shout, he will not shout, he is _better_ than that. ‘A fucking child, Fury! She’s what, fourteen? Fifteen? Barely out of fucking diapers and you send me in to kill her like some fucking animal! You send _me_ of all the fucking Agents in S.H.I.E.L.D. to do this mission, knowing full well that I’d _never_ make that fucking call! You’re a fucking _moron_ , Nick! You’re a total fucking _idiot_! She’s a fucking child!’

Well, so much for not shouting, for not trashing the office, because he’s throwing papers and pens and chairs, raging as he roars, and Fury sits patiently, waiting for him to finish. Clint holds out for another couple of minutes, howling obscenities and throwing files, yelling insults and repeating the same fact over and over again until he collapses from the weight of it.

‘You sent me to kill a girl,’ he whispers, and he buries his face in his hands.

‘No,’ Fury says, ‘no, I never sent you to kill her, Barton, you should know better. Of course I knew you’d bring her in, of course you’d make a different call. You were the only one that would. The only one that _could_ do it. It had to be you.’

Clint freezes, peers up through his fingers. ‘What?’

With a world-weary sigh, Fury gets to his feet and starts collecting his trashed paperwork. ‘I know you, Barton. We know how you are when there are kids on the line. I’ve seen it in every report Coulson files. You might not do your paperwork, but he does. I knew that as soon as you saw her, as soon as you clapped eyes on Black Widow, you’d bring her in on our side, or you’d die trying.’

‘You were willing to let me die on the off-chance that I’d be able to talk her round?’

‘I don’t play games of chance, Clint. You should know that.’

Clint takes that for a vote of confidence, for a sign of complete faith in him and his abilities. Fury is not stingy on the praise where it is deserved, but he has never admitted his belief in the Hawkeye name so readily before. He glances up to find Fury watching him from behind his desk. When he catches the agent looking, Fury smiles that almost-smile, the one that’s not really there.

For a minute or more, they sit silently, Clint on the floor, legs spread-eagled and head in his hands. After a few moments pass, Clint takes his hearing aids out and sits there in the aching silence to think and collect himself without interruption. Fury waits him out, because Fury waits everyone out, and when Clint is ready, he puts the aids back in, gets to his feet, and shakes himself out.

‘Sorry for trashing your office,’ he says, though it’s not a genial tone.

‘As I said; due for refurb. She’s in the same block you were, if you wanted to go and see her.’

Clint swallows, and nods. ‘Do we have a name for her yet?’

Fury flicks through some papers; Clint sees blueprints, and knows they’re part of a schematic for a new airship.

‘Natasha,’ Fury says.

* * *

_2015_

Sitting on one of the cold, unforgiving benches – and he’ll lobby for comfortable seats, preferably with black leather so that when agents come in bleeding and missing bits, they don’t stain the upholstery too visibly – with mostly healed injuries but the lingering aches from it all, Clint rests a cheek on his knuckles, and waits.

He waits and waits and waits. His ears eventually stop ringing, somewhere around the time he starts falling asleep. It’s almost morning.

(Helen had called him in the dead of night, and he’d gone straight to HQ. Laura had followed him to the door, asked what it was.

‘I can’t tell you,’ he’d whispered, ‘not yet. It’s good news, though. I hope. I’ll be home within a day or so. It’s just to HQ.’

She’d studied his face. ‘You’re bringing another stray home, aren’t you?’

He’d smiled, kissed her forehead, and disappeared out the door.)

Helen appears in front of him with a clack-clack-clack of heels, and he snaps upright. His head spins, and he shakes it out. It’s been a couple of days. He’ll give it a couple more and then ask her to check him over.

‘Good news?’ he asks, and she nods, gestures for him to follow.

‘We have him,’ she says, and Clint lengthens his stride to keep pace. ‘He’s not quite there; we don’t know his mental state yet, since we’ve kept him under for the sake of his rest. We don’t know how his powers are going to react, so we don’t want him ripping himself open by accident.’

‘You think he’ll be,’ Clint starts, and then stops, unsure how to continue.

‘Damaged? There’s a possibility. We don’t really have the data to predict the Cradle’s abilities in that department.’

‘Well, no,’ Clint agrees with a nod. ‘I’m just – I’m glad, you know? It’s better than nothing.’

‘I hope so. Just through here, I’ll wait outside.’

As a rule, Clint hates hospitals, hates medical facilities, hates the clinical white sweep of tile and curtain and shiny polymer of the equipment, hates the sterile air. At least there’s no incessant beeping to indicate heart rate. The Cradle is nowhere in sight, thank God, but Pietro has tubes up his nose and in his arm and he was a pale kid anyway, but he practically blends into the sheets, he’s that fucking white.

‘Oh, kiddo,’ Clint sighs, and drags the chair in the corner over. He takes Pietro’s hand, presses his fingers to the boy’s pulse, measures it against his own. ‘Steady. She did a good job with you, you know. You’re lucky. Best in the business. She saved my life too.’

He almost expects some witty retort, waits for it, but of course it doesn’t come, and he lets out a breath he forgot about.

‘You better not die now,’ he says, and rubs his thumb against Pietro’s knuckles one last time before letting go. ‘I don’t think I could handle Wanda’s reaction if she found out about this.’

It’s probably the exhaustion, but he thinks Pietro is smiling.

When, after several minutes have passed, there’s no sign of change at all, Clint gets to his feet with a groan, and lingers by the bed, hand outstretched. He brushes it over Pietro’s hair, combs his hair off his brow, and catches himself leaning in.

He laughs at himself, straightens up and rubs the back of his neck.

‘Not your son, Clint,’ he chuckles, and reaches down to brush his thumb over a bruise fading at the kid’s hairline. ‘Not your son.’

He smoothes out a few errant hairs, and smiles when the style becomes reminiscent of Cap’s. If he’d thought to keep his phone on him, he might have taken a photo to send him. But it’s in his locker with all his other shit. Popping his back, he slips out of the room and back to where Helen is waiting for him.

‘He’s alive,’ he says with a happy sigh. ‘That’s good. How – how long before he can come home?’

‘Home?’

Clint rolls his eyes, and something pops behind them. Definitely need to get that checked out. ‘Home. With me. Where else is he going to go? His sister’s there. My family are there. It’s the best place for him to be. We can look after him.’

Helen looks at the tablet computer in her hand, scrolls and taps and studies what he assumes are Pietro’s notes.

‘I want to keep him in and monitor him,’ she says, ‘for at least another forty-eight hours. Just to make sure. Then we’ll pull him out, and see how he is. Let’s say – it’s – it’s what, Wednesday? Let’s say Monday. If all’s well, you can take him home then.’

Clint nods, and looks through the window to where Pietro is still sleeping, his vitals the only real colour. A bright green, healthy and vibrant and steady.

‘Alright. Call me if there’s any change.’

She nods. ‘We will. And Barton?’

He turns back, having made to head down the corridor.

‘What is it?’

‘You lied about the girlfriend.’

He grins. ‘I never did. I’ve got a wife. She was my girlfriend once.’

Helen smacks his arm with the tablet.

* * *

_2015_

Tony comes in with his hands and T-shirt covered in machine oil and grease, and wipes them off on a cloth he’d procured, Clint presumes, from the shed. He looks proud of himself, a little more content, but the easy smile slips when he finds Clint staring at him.

‘What?’ he asks, and Clint turns his attention back to the football scores.

‘Nothing,’ he says, ‘just – I thought I saw the arc reactor.’

‘What?’ Tony repeats, and Clint shrugs, pulls the paper up in front of his face.

‘I was seeing things.’

‘It was a torch.’

Clint, who doesn’t understand _why_ he thought he saw the arc reactor, ignores him. Maybe he’ll go away and they’ll forget he ever opened his mouth. For a long, long moment, Tony stands there, and Clint knows he’s doing that slack-jawed gaping thing, because Tony has always done it whenever Clint opens his mouth.

 ‘A _torch_ ,’ he repeats.

‘I heard you the first time. It was blue and like seven in the morning.’

‘It was seven-thirty, actually,’ Laura says as she enters, and Clint hands her the business pages when she reaches for them. ‘And it’s alright, honey, no one’s judging you.’

‘I’m judging him,’ Tony says. ‘Is this a “dad” thing? Is this what having kids does to you?’

Laura flicks a Cheerio at him. ‘Don’t be mean, Stark.’

Tony sits, at last, but he continues to gape. For a few minutes, they’re silent. Coop had been awake, but he’s content to sit in the living room watching a re-run of Cosmos, and Lila is still asleep. The baby monitor on the table is blissfully silent. It’s nice, even if Tony is staring at the wall with that gear-turning look on his face.

‘Wait,’ he says, when the cogs finish whirring. ‘If you two are _married_ – nice rings, by the way, who chose them? – where did you go on honeymoon?’

‘Phil chose them,’ Laura says, ‘Clint was busy at the time. And we haven’t had a honeymoon. It kind of defeated the point of keeping me a secret from S.H.I.E.L.D.’s enemies.’

‘So,’ Tony starts, and Clint knows that he’s going to sit on Phil choosing the rings for _months_. ‘You’ve never had a holiday?’

‘No.’

‘No wonder you’re seeing things,’ Tony sniffs, and immediately starts tapping at his phone.

Clint despairs.

Laura’s foot bumps into his calf, and he glances over, sees her looking at him with concern.

‘Tony,’ he tries, but Tony Stark is a man with a plan, and Clint should know better than to try and stop him. ‘Please don’t do something rash.’

‘Like what?’ he asks absently, and hums. ‘No, not Venice. Bora Bora, more like Bora Boring. What about Santorini; how do you feel about Greece?’

‘Greece?’ Laura asks, ‘what about Greece?’

‘How do you feel about it? Do you like Greece?’

‘I’ve never been to Greece? I like Greek food?’

Clint is prepared to admit that he’s lost control of the situation, but he’s not willing to give up trying to get it back.

‘Don’t encourage him, Law,’ he says, but it’s too late.

‘Greece it is. How’s May sound? There are good deals in Disney World around then. How many of them are there now? Kids, I mean? I need to know how many tickets to book.’

Even Laura is now baffled.

‘What?’ she asks, ‘what do you mean kids? I’ve only got three.’

‘Yes, yes, but what about the others? The – what do they call themselves these days? The Barton Strays? How many of them are there?’

Clint gives up.

‘Four,’ he says, ‘if you count Nat. Otherwise three.’

‘I thought there was more.’

‘I could count you if you like, since you keep letting yourself in.’

‘No,’ Tony says, with a twist of his lips. ‘I think I’m alright, thanks. One dad was enough. Alright, so that’s six. Do you think they need a babysitter?’

Neither Barton is on the same page as Stark, and share a look.

‘Wait,’ Laura says, and reaches over the table to put her hand on Tony’s arm. ‘Wait, slow down. What are you doing?’

‘Well, if you’re going on a honeymoon,’ Tony says, as though he’s explaining this for the hundredth time, ‘the kids will need entertainment, right? And it won’t be fair to leave the Strays out.’

‘You’re putting _Bucky_ in Disney World?’ Clint asks. ‘You think letting him loose with the kids is a good idea?’

‘It’ll do him good.’

‘Steve is going to kill you. The kids will get Bucky killed, and then Steve will kill you, and then I’ll have to kill Steve out of obligation, and then Sam’s going to come after _me_ , and then _Nat_ will get involved and Tony, please.’

Laura pats her husband’s arm. ‘Honey, stop that. Sam’s responsible, right? Steve says he’s good with war vets, and whenever Bucky stays over, you’re up most of the night with him, so I think it’ll be good for him. To be out somewhere new, but have that security, you know?’

Clint’s eyes roll heavenward, but he’s saved from further trying to salvage the ruins of this conversation by the baby monitor crackling to life.

‘I’ll go,’ he says, and is out of his chair and out of the room in barely seconds.

As he goes up the stairs, he hears Tony declare that he thinks Disney World is a fine idea, and Laura hesitantly agreeing. Not, he thinks, that she has much choice, because Tony’s probably already booked everything and left them to pack the bags.

* * *

_1994_

She’s mad at him, and he stands patiently waiting for her to leave the office, playing with a Tamagotchi that Phil tells him is right up his alley for time-wasting. It is, but Clint won’t tell him that.

'Oh, it’s you.’

He looks up, gives Laura his nicest smile and clips the Tamagotchi back onto his belt.

'Hi,’ he says.

'Where’s Lucky?’ she asks, striding straight past and not giving him so much as a glance. 'You forget about him, too?’

'Naw,’ Clint says, and pushes away from the wall to follow her. 'He’s at work, getting some extra training in.’

'You never told me what you actually do,’ she says, stride slowing by half a second. 'Are you, like, a superhero?’

'Not really,’ he replies, falls into step with her, easy-going and loping, like he’s exerting no effort whatsoever. He is several inches taller, he supposes, and she’s wearing a very tight skirt. 'I fight crime, but it’s not nearly as glamorous as all that.’

'A secret agent, then,’ she says, and he feels her gaze flick to his face, down to his hand. He extends it, and tries not to smile when she takes it.

'Well, damn,’ he sighs, 'I’m gonna have to kill you now. Can’t have all my secrets known.’

'You bled all over the floor in Starbucks.’

'That could have been anyone.’

'Would you really kill me?’ she asks, and frowns at their hands.

'Depends. Are you a bad guy?’

'Are you?’

He doesn’t walk her home from pizza that night. Work calls, and he gets this look on her face that she knows she’s going to get very well-acquainted with. It’s the expression of a man being pulled away from where he wants to be for something he doesn’t get paid enough to do, and he sighs heavily before hauling himself to his feet and leaning over the table to steal a kiss or three before he goes out the door.

‘I’ll definitely call you!’ he yells as he pushes the door open. ‘Promise!’

(He’s got a gunshot wound in his thigh, and Phil is patching him up. Laura asks if he’s jerking it, and he laughs so hard he goes a bit giddy. He tells her that unfortunately not, he’s been injured, did she make it home alright?)

* * *

_2009_

Cooper loves space. He doesn’t remember how he came to love space; his first real, _real_ memory is lying on the grass just off the front porch on a picnic blanket with his momma next to him, Lucky on his other side, head on his paws but not asleep. Lila had been asleep in her Moses basket, tucked up nice and safe and warm, quietly breathing along with her big brother and their momma. He’d been staring at the sky. He thinks his momma had said Dad was coming home tonight, and had let him stay up to meet him. Sometimes he came home in a black plane he never saw until it was right there, turning to land. Mostly it was in a car with Uncle Phil, and he always staggered a little, red and blue and black and purple, and Momma was always worried sick by it.

But tonight was nice. It was a little cool, but not _cold_ , and Momma had made cocoa with marshmallows and spices and it was nice, really nice.

He liked seeing the stars.

‘There are shapes,’ he remembers saying, and Momma had hummed, ruffled his hair. ‘Look, that’s a big W.’

‘It is,’ she says, ‘and there, see? It’s like a wheelbarrow.’

‘Are we gonna tell Dad we broke it?’

‘No.’

To this day, Dad still doesn’t know why the wheelbarrow was missing its wheel, and why he later found that wheel at the far end of the field, near the stream. Cooper promised not to tell, and Momma is the best at keeping secrets.

He’d liked the stars the best, almost more than seeing the plane land quiet and familiar in the grass a few dozen feet away and Dad come stumbling down the ramp, limping a little. Momma had got to her feet with some help from Coop, and had gone to meet him, bringing him back to the blanket and Lucky and him, to Coop, to Dad’s boy.

‘Hey, kiddo,’ Dad had smiled, and he’d gone to ruffle his hair, but stopped himself, his hands black and red. Coop had thrown himself into Clint’s arms, not caring about getting dirty. There was always water, after all, and this T-shirt needed a wash anyway.

‘Dad,’ he’d breathed, as if the word held all the weight in the world, ‘Dad, you’re home.’

He’d looked up, and Clint’s head had been tilted slightly, the way it does when he forgets his aids, or they aren’t working properly. He’d been listening without hearing, and Cooper had smiled, made grabby hands until Clint had picked him up. Coop had fallen asleep on the walk into the house, rocked to dreamland by the motion of his father walking him home.

When he wakes in the morning, he’s in his own bed, Lucky on the foot or so at the bottom, fast asleep. His kicking leg, he thinks, that’s what woke him, and he kicks back, as best he can under the covers. His legs are only little though, and barely reach. Rolling out of bed and landing on the floor with a thump, he finds his slippers and his favourite sweater, pulling it on over his pyjamas and he makes his way downstairs to find Dad halfway up.

‘You alright, Coop?’ he asks, and Coop nods.

Y E S, he signs, careful, slow, letter-by-letter, just to show Dad that he’s been practicing. Clearly Dad can hear him, if he heard him fall out of bed.

Dad’s got a big ugly bruise down the side of his face, and some scabby bits, like he fell over. He, Cooper, can’t see it, but Clint has similar grazed bruises down his arm and side, worst on his shoulder and hip. His face took very little damage, considering. Laura would have killed him if he needed reconstruction. Carefully, Coop reaches across the space between the steps between them to touch that bruise, rest his palm skin-hot against it. His hand barely covers it, but Clint smiles anyway, and nips, as if to bite, but doesn’t get anywhere near close enough.

Coop, barely three, giggles and reaches to be picked up again. He likes Dad picking him up, and Clint’s happy to oblige.

* * *

_2015_

Wanda wakes hungry. It’s not _unlike_ her, but it’s not _like_ her either; midnight snacks are more Pietro’s thing, what with his not-supernatural ability to wolf down food in a matter of seconds, and the cheeky ass doesn’t even get indigestion. She’s never forgiven him for it, not in all the years she’s known him, which is, obviously, all of them. But the hunger doesn’t abate, so up she gets and downstairs she goes.

(After some drama last week with plates going missing and Tony Stark not finishing his meals, food is entirely banned from upstairs unless ill or supervised, and Wanda is in no position to argue it.)

Clint recently fixed the creaking tread, so she makes no noise as she sneaks downstairs. He’ll know she’s awake, most likely, because he _always_ knows when someone’s awake in his house, but she pauses, listens, and there’s no creak from the master bedroom, no over-exhausted put-upon _dad_ getting out of bed when he’d likely just been falling asleep, so she considers it a victory. He trusts her enough to know she’s not going walkabouts for anything too troublesome, and he’s content to stay in bed.

As she hits the bottom of the stairs, hand curling around the finial, she pauses. There’s [music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLpmj059JFA) coming from the kitchen, quiet, barely audible, but music nonetheless. She’s made it a point, a promise, an oath, to never use her powers against the Bartons, and she doesn’t need them to feel the – the – it’s not even love sweeping over her, not quite in so many words. It’s something hotter than that, a searing warmth like a too-hot bath, or sitting too close to the open fire. But it’s honest, true. She doesn’t believe in soulmates, doesn’t believe in fate and destiny and red strings, but she believes, as she stands there soaking in it like she has any right, that she _could_ believe in it.

A few steps around the corner, and she can see through the door into the kitchen, to where Clint and Laura – and that explains why Clint wasn’t reacting to her being awake, because he’s already there – slow-dancing. They look comfortable, content, looking their age, looking exhausted and _tired_ , well-worn and well-loved. Laura’s ring glints in the light; Clint’s hand moves against her back, his sparkles to match. Wanda smiles, leans against the wall to watch them.

They’re not dressed, Clint in lounge pants that she’s convinced are actually for a cartoon, Laura in a soft dressing gown, slipped low from one shoulder and showing a strap for whatever she’d gone to bed in. Clint’s covered in plasters from some renovation he’d started and Laura has pen on the back of her hand, a half-formed note to call someone, or a grocery list she’d remembered in the middle of the night.

Clint presses a kiss to Laura’s hair, twirls her. She laughs, and Wanda realises, when the laugh is silent, that they’re mouthing along to the song, but neither are making a noise. She watches Clint as he smiles and draws his wife back into his arms, almost lifts her off her feet in a tight embrace. He’s not got his hearing aids in, she can tell from the way his head tilts, is totally deaf to the music playing, but he’s not missing so much as a word, not a second out of time.

Wanda’s never heard the song before, but clearly they know it better than any other. Maybe they do this regularly.

She smiles to herself, sends out the faintest tendril of thought, presses it against the near-visible wall of love, and almost gasps when it caves, lets her in, extends to surround her. It shifts, becomes something a little more platonic, and she glances up, finds Clint watching her over Laura’s head. When they lock gazes, he winks, and Wanda’s smile widens. She dips her head, bows out, and disappears back upstairs.

It’s only when she settles back into bed and her stomach grumbles that she remembers she was hungry.

‘I’ll just have a big breakfast,’ she tells herself, and rolls over.

* * *

_c. 2001_

Clint scrabbles for purchase, almost slipping before hauling himself up. Up and over, dropping in a heap on the tarmac before scrambling to his feet and staggering off down the alley.

‘Bobbi?’ he asks, but gets no response. ‘Coulson?’

Again, nothing. It’s hard to tell if he’s hearing things, or if he’s hearing nothing at all. His heart pounds like an overzealous drum against his vestibular, knocking him first one way and then the other. He thinks he clicks his fingers, but it’s hard to tell; his blood is still wet, overfilling the whorls of his fingertips and the creases at the joints, dripping every other step.

Something rattles, scuffles, behind him. Is he hearing it? No, no, it’s out of sync with his movements by a significant margin, and he’s never had unsynchronised audio before. Muted, yes, of course he has. He’s fucking _deaf_. But out of sync? No, even his worst hearing aids don’t delay the processing of sound.

So someone’s behind him, then. And his aids aren’t on the blink, it’s just the comms. That’s good to know. He’ll remember that in debrief. He’ll track down whoever checked the tech for this mission, and slap them in the mouth with his bloody socks. That’ll show ‘em.

That’ll show ‘em.

‘You wanna keep limping off down the alley?’ asks his stalker. ‘Or stop here so when you shit yourself, it’s not so embarrassing?’

Clint pauses, leans against the wall. He holds up a hand, doubles over, throws up.

‘Sorry,’ he says, between heaves, ‘sorry, you got me good, there.’

‘I try. Do you need a minute?’

‘Several. You sure you don’t mind?’

The merc waves a hand, rounds him to make sure he’s not vomiting blood, tells him that.

‘I want to kill you myself,’ he says, ‘not by proxy. I want to do it tonight, but I’d like a fight first, if that’s alright with you.’

‘Can’t I get this patched up first?’

‘Now that’s cheating. Don’t you know better? I like taking my time. It’s more fun that way.’

Clint wouldn’t know about that. Bullseyes don’t leave you much time for taking your time. It’s not a bullseye if it’s not a one-hit kill.

God, Laura’s going to kill him.

A few dry heaves later and he’s straightening up, spitting one last time before wiping his mouth.

‘This isn’t a very good assassination,’ he offers, ‘I mean. That’s what this is, right? An assassination? It looked like one when you got the drop on us, but come one now, I almost got away.’

The mercenary smiles, stretching from ear to ear, and his eyes twinkle. It’s the same kind of happiness when Coulson finds some new trinket in an abandoned S.H.I.E.L.D. bunker from the sixties. Clint sighs, knows he’s about to get punched in the gut, but doesn’t have time to move. The severed Achilles tendon and the gash in his belly force his weight to balance solely on his good leg, which is barely holding its own as it is. He is in no state for an extended fight.

If he doesn’t get out, he’s going to die. Botched assassination or not, the mercenary will kill him.

‘Tell me who you’re working for,’ Clint wheezes, and manages to dodge a swipe for his throat, though it spills him limb-first across the tarmac. He lands in a puddle and scrapes his hands on a pothole.

That's an added infection to the open wounds, which is really just fantastic. Really appreciate that.

The mercenary hauls him to his feet, laughs, all teeth and too-stretched lips. His breath is sour, but it’s no more sour than Clint’s sure his is.

‘A friend,’ he smiles, and gets so close Clint almost thinks he’s going to kiss him. ‘It’s been so _long_ since he saw you, _Hawkeye_. He wants to see you again, though.’

‘In Hell,’ Clint spits, all blood, and headbutts him.

The mercenary backs off, and Clint sees a blurry break for freedom. He’s lost enough blood that his vision is swimming, and his heart is jarring against his hearing aids, but he doesn’t care, he takes the opportunity offered him, and runs for the end of the alley.

‘Get down!’

He doesn’t hesitate, throws himself to the ground, and stays there. One shot, two, and a thump. Is the mercenary dead? He can’t bring himself to lift his head. It feels kind of damp, his head. Maybe he landed in another puddle. Funny, he doesn't remember it raining recently.

‘Oh, Clint,’ Coulson sighs, ‘don’t rest there, you’re going to get an ear infection. Come on, up you get.’

‘No,’ he moans, protests weakly at Coulson grabbing under his arms. It puts too much pressure on his belly, and he can feel his intestines making a break for it. ‘No, stop.’

Coulson sees the blood, or smells it, and stops trying to pull him up, rolls him over. Clint’s vision does a loop-the-loop, blacks out before returning. The sound is muddied; maybe lying in a puddle wasn’t such a great idea. Coulson touches his ear, and Clint thinks he’s calling for evac.

‘We were looking for you,’ he manages to decipher. ‘Morse lost your trail.’

‘Bobbi,’ he sighs, ‘she ‘kay?’

‘She’s fine. We lost you on the comms, so we split up to find you. I suppose this makes sense. Clint – Clint, are you awake? Hey, stay with me.’

‘I’m here,’ Clint assures him, and reaches up to pat wetly at Coulson’s face, feeling a little guilty for the smear of blood. ‘Bastard got me good. Achilles is ruptured, I think. And my belly. Couple others. Had a chain thing. With a knife. Too fast for me. Nat could take him. Did you kill him?’

‘Sedated.’

‘Tell Nat to kill him.’

‘He’s not my priority right now, Agent Barton. You are. If you die, Laura’s going to kill me, you know that? And you just got that new place, too.’

‘Nice place,’ Clint agrees. ‘Wanna redo the wallpaper though. Fuckin’ ugly.’

Coulson keeps him talking, bringing him back to the conversation of the ugly wallpaper in the bedroom of his new apartment any time he starts slipping, and Clint becomes vaguely aware of Bobbi appearing at his side, grabbing his wrist to keep an eye on his pulse. Evac arrives after barely minutes, and they manage to haul him up into the stretcher.

He wakes fully a day or so later, safely ensconced in a S.H.I.E.L.D. med-room, tubes up his nose and his ankle numb, but intact. Coulson is asleep next to him, chin on his chest and one of the old Captain America comics open on his lap. His phone is flashing, and Clint listens to his heart beating on the monitor until the nurses enter to check on him.

* * *

_2015_

It’s mid-November. Clint’s asleep in the nursery, Nathaniel balanced effortlessly against his shoulder, held in place with one hand. Lucky’s curled up at his feet, half under the blanket pile, half out of it, and his tail wags lazily. Every so often, Clint shifts, starts snoring, and Laura passes them a couple of times on her way to and from downstairs. Clint seems totally content to stay there, and Nathaniel hasn’t slept so peacefully in weeks, it feels like. She’s happy to have a quiet morning.

At least, it’s quiet until the children wake, and then it’s scream o’clock. Laura finds herself laughing even as she wiggles a finger in her ear, and doors are thrown open.

Clint, bless him, had the foresight to take his hearing aids out, and sleeps through all the commotion. Somehow, Nathaniel is so soothed by his dad’s neck that he stays asleep too.

‘Kids,’ Laura laughs, and Wanda’s door pops open, her messy, sleepy head poking through the gap. She waves the girl down, and she looks at the kids, nods, and disappears back into her room. ‘Kids, come on, calm down, it’s six in the morning.’

‘It’s _snowing_!’ Lila screeches, jumping in place.

Laura winces. Stood at the door peering into the nursery, she sees Nathaniel beginning to stir.

‘Alright, alright, go brush your teeth, go on, I’ll go wake your dad and brother, and then – then be careful, but go wake your big brother, okay? He’s still sore, but he needs to get up too.’

They look at each other, and then up at her, and nod, rush past to go to the bathroom.

Carefully, she slips into the nursery, and a few steps from them, Clint jerks awake, staring groggily at her before focusing.

‘S’it time to get up?’ he slurs, and Laura nods, reaches to pull Nathaniel out of his embrace, giving him a chance to right himself and his equilibrium before plugging his aids back in.

‘Morning, honey,’ she hums, and leans down to kiss him. ‘It’s been snowing. The babies have seen.’

‘Oh, _God_. Glad I took my aids out. Strays?’

‘I think Pietro’s still asleep. Wanda’s awake, but I don’t know if she’s seen.’

As if on cue, Wanda’s door slams open.

‘Pietro!’ she howls, and they listen to her slam her fist on her brother’s door. ‘Pietro Maximoff, there is _snow_ outside. There is _snow_!’

She waits, but gets no response, and immediately begins yelling in Sokovian. Laura looks at her husband, who looks about as baffled as she does.

‘I thought your aids could translate?’ she asks.

‘Not these ones,’ he replies with a shake of his head, and goes to the window. ‘Cheeky fucker.’

‘Language, Clint.’

His ears flush red, but he’s jamming a finger against the window.

‘No, look. Wanda? He’s outside! He’s building a fort!’

‘A fort?’ comes Wanda’s reply, and she slips in past Laura and Nathaniel, elbowing Clint out of the way. ‘What an ass! That’s not _fair_!’

‘I can ground him?’ Clint offers.

‘No,’ she replies, and something mean crosses her face. Clint decides he’s not setting foot outside today unless it’s the other side of the house, with Nathaniel in tow for protection. ‘No, I think I can manage.’

 And with that, she’s off, her door slamming shut just as the bathroom door opens and Coop and Lila come barrelling out.

‘Cooper!’ Clint calls, ‘Lila!’

They screech to a halt and peek into the nursery.

‘Did you think you could get away without a morning hug?’ he asks, and they shake their heads fervently, hurry over to him.

Hugs given and kisses pressed to sleep-mussed hair, they scurry off to the kitchen. Clint goes to follow, pausing to kiss Laura and Nathaniel, and then hurries after their over-excited children.

‘You’d think you’d never seen snow before,’ he says. ‘Right, breakfast call in three, two, one - ’

‘Pancakes!’ they chime on cue, and Clint nods.

‘Pancakes it is. Lay the table, call your mother and your sister, and I’ll go get your brother in.’

They rush off upstairs, and Clint goes to the back door, almost tripping over Lucky on the way.

‘Ha, still sneaking up on me,’ he grins, reaches down to rub the retriever’s ear. ‘Alright, let’s go play fetch.’

Clint wasn’t a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent for as long as he was, isn’t an _Avenger_ , without knowing when someone is gearing up to throw a snowball at him from behind a densely-packed snow wall.

‘You throw that snowball and no one will hear you scream,’ he says.

Pietro throws it anyway. Clint catches it, and whips is back so fast that Pietro, who is still not quite in full control of his speed, fails to dodge it. He gasps, squeals, and his snow-covered head appears over the wall.

‘Don’t give me that look,’ Clint tells him, dusting his hands off. ‘You should have seen it coming. Now, come on in, I’m making pancakes for breakfast, and if you’re good, I might give you a couple extra.’

 For someone who is, by Helen’s orders, supposed to still be in a wheelchair, Pietro certainly moves fast when there is the potential for food. Clint supposes the speed boosts his metabolism something chronic, burns his calories almost as much as Cap’s do. He’ll have to get some tests done, so he knows how much he needs to feed the boy to keep him going.

Lucky trails through the snow for a minute, and Clint leaves the door open for him to come back in when he’s done, getting started on the pancakes.

Everyone migrates to the table over the next five minutes, dressed ready for a day in the snow. Well, except for Clint, who is still in his pyjamas from the night before, but that can wait. He takes a moment, as Laura gets Nathaniel set up in his high chair, to admire her jeans; she doesn’t often wear them, and they’re the pair he likes the most. But the moment only lasts a second, and then he’s returning his attention to the pancakes.

Several minutes later, everyone has a plate stacked high, except for Nathaniel, who is happy to sit there and blink at them with a dopey smile on his face. They eat in comfortable silence, and when they’re done, as Laura gets up to get the plates, Coop asks if they can go outside now.

Pietro, who is still salty about getting his own snowball thrown back at him, grumbles something in Sokovian that has Wanda kicking him under the table.

‘Sure,’ Clint says, ‘just stay in sight of the house, and make sure none of the snowballs have any chunks of ice in them.’

Within seconds, the kitchen is empty but for Clint, Laura and Nathaniel. Laura stands at the sink washing the plates whilst Clint dries, and they watch the kids creates teams (Pietro and Lila, who has her dad’s mean aim, and Wanda and Coop, who has his dad’s fastball) and begin their war.

Clint goes to the door, yells about letting Coop and Wanda build their fort first.

‘We’re going to invade!’ Coop yells back.

‘Then blow it up!’ Wanda calls.

‘Good!’

With that, Lucky comes racing in, pausing at the door to shake the snow off before stepping over the threshold.

‘Good boy,’ Clint says, and shuts the door.

Laura laughs, and Clint gives her that same smile he always does.

‘I think,’ she says, in that tone that suggests she’s already decided, ‘that we should go out the front. Take Nathaniel with us, and Lucky. It’s his first snow, after all. We could build snow castles.’

Clint smiles, looks over to where Nathaniel is happily bobbing to the radio.

‘That sounds nice,’ he agrees, ‘we’ve got winter stuff for him?’

‘I wasn’t sure what winter would bring,’ Laura says, quiet, ‘so I was prepared well in advance.’

Clint ducks down to kiss her cheek. ‘I know. I’m home now, though. I’ve got no plans on getting involved in Avengers stuff any time soon. I’m all yours. And the kids, of course.’ He gives her a look, hand sneaking to her back pocket. ‘Mostly yours, though.’

She slaps his chest gently, and tells him not to be cheeky, but she’s grinning.

* * *

_2012_

The emptiness swells, rising in a crescendo of achingly pure silence, the crunch of first snow and the breathless sterility of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s labs. His heart pounds in his ears, black spots in his eyes, and he struggles, glass walls pressing tight around him. He tries to fight free, tries to break the ties, but they pull tighter against his arms, pinning him until all he can do is breathe.

And then he can’t even do that.

‘Clint? Clint, wake up, honey, wake up. It’s okay, it’s a nightmare. It’s alright, I’ve got you, you’re safe.’

The words are distorted, a voice he recognises but cannot place, trapped in the echo of underwater deafness. He shakes his head until that too is pinned into place. His skull aches, brain cracking at the seams and unravelling, spilling all of his thoughts and memories across the floor in an array of vague, fuzzy emotion, and then boots step on them, crushing them beneath the heel.

A laugh, a promise, a shadow of curling horns and the bluest blue he'd ever seen.

With a strangled yelp, he tears his way free of the sheets and tumbles onto the floor, panting and hiccupping with sobs. Before Laura can even lean over the side of the bed, he’s on his feet and staggering into the en-suite, collapsing over the toilet and throwing up.

‘Oh God,’ Laura breathes from somewhere behind him, her hand running up his back, over scars and bruises and scabbing burns, through his sweat-wet hair, rubbing behind his ears. It doesn’t soothe him at all, her hand too hot against his too-cold skin, and he feels like he’s burning from the inside out, like there’s something eating him an atom at a time. ‘What can I do?’

‘Nothing,’ he wheezes, and spits into the toilet bowl before retching again. ‘Nothing you can do.’

She stays until he tells her to go, and then she disappears into the bedroom and further, out into the hall. The third step from the top creaks, and she heads downstairs. He knows she’s going to call S.H.I.E.L.D. and in three hours, Nat will be here, or Maria, or some faceless suit, and Clint will be bundled off into HQ for more tests and psych evals and he’s not in the mood to be poked and prodded with sharp, acutely-angled words designed to pierce beneath the black spots. He can do this himself, if he just has the time. He survived the three months in a S.H.I.E.L.D. holding cell without any lasting effects. He managed well enough in the circus, in that six months trekking across the country, he managed well enough living a solitary existence before Lucky came into his life, before Laura, before Coulson. He managed, he survived, he _lived._

He can make it out the other side of this. Possession is like brain-washing, like encoded training, like not knowing any different. He’s heard stories of actual sleeper agents who didn’t remember who they were before the operation began but recalled everything with startling clarity the moment they were activated. He’s heard stories of amnesiacs building a new life around the missing memories.

Clint knows he has the training, the stubbornness, the force of will, the security and the safety and the honest-to-God _love_ he needs to make it through this. Laura loves him more than he thinks he’s ever been loved, and his kids adore the bones of him. He’s loved and wanted, he _belongs_. Coulson – Phil – is dead. Gone. But they’d been close. Phil had believed in him from the beginning, had known he could become great. And what was greater than this?

Not the kneeling over the toilet bowl throwing up because of a nightmare about an Asgardian possessing you, but the whole having-a-family thing, the being-an-Avenger. He did some great things. He can still do them.

He can raise his kids, raise them right, be everything _his_ father was not. He can keep his family safe, keep his friends safe, keep the world safe. He can’t keep them safe from people like his dad, but he can keep them safe from people like Loki. He can do that much.

He can do that much.


	3. Holidays and Meetings

_2016_

They lose Bucky in Germany. At first, Sam doesn’t realise; Lila is tugging him fervently in the direction of Italy, and she’s babbling about something he doesn’t quite catch enough of to fill in the gaps. He could pick her up and make her talk to his face, and not the other direction, but she’s happy enough. Coop is loping along beside them, nose in the guidebook, and the twins have taken Nath for a quiet five minutes away from all the noise and bustle. It’s only when Sam turns back to make sure Coop’s still there when he realises Bucky is gone.

‘Yo, hold up, kids,’ he says, tugging Lila to a stop, ‘we lost Bucky.’

Lila groans. ‘But _Italy_ ,’ she whines.

‘We’ve lost Bucky, Lila,’ Coop says, snapping the guidebook shut. ‘ _Bucky_.’

He immediately sets off back the way they came, and Sam looks at Lila. She yanks her hand free and tears off after her brother.

‘Don’t go too far!’ Sam calls, following them. ‘God, Laura’s going to kill me. I’ve lost all six of them.’

He hasn’t lost three of them, he knows where they are. Kind of. He trusts the twins to not get in trouble, if only because they adore Nath too much. Lila and Cooper, however.

‘Sam!’ Cooper yells, and he steps around a family to find Coop and Lila hiding behind one of the food carts.

‘What the hell is this?’ he asks himself, but goes over, and ducks when they both jerk their hands in a ducking motion.

They hold a finger to their lips, and then point. Sam follows their fingers, and smiles. Bucky is hiding around the corner of a building, and Sam can’t see his face, turned as it is, but he can see where he’s looking.

‘Well, I’ll be,’ he huffs, and the kids continue to peer.

‘Why’s he staring?’ Lila whispers. ‘She his favourite?’

‘Probably,’ Sam agrees.

The cart’s vendor is staring at them. He smiles up at him, and then points to Bucky. The vendor looks, and then laughs. Sam turns back to Lila.

‘I think Snow White’s the oldest Princess, right?’ he asks, ‘she’s probably the only one he saw.’

‘That’s real sad,’ Lila says.

Coop nods. ‘He’s missing out. Do you think he wants a picture?’

Sam snorts. ‘Look at him, he just wants to look for a bit. Let him.’

They – him and the Bartons, him and Steve, him and _anyone_ – haven’t really discussed Bucky’s memories of Before, of the war and the life he led. He, Sam, has no idea how many memories Bucky’s gotten back, how many he remembers or has been told about. There’s no guarantee he’s not about to lose it, whatever of it he has, but Sam has to trust that Bucky’s in full control of himself, and trust that if it gets to be too much, the memories, or the sensations, or the sensory overload, that he’ll take himself off to a quiet corner and calm down.

But he seems quite content to just stand there and watch, looking somewhere between creeper and star-struck. Sam has some faith in humanity left, and goes with the latter.

‘Lila,’ Coop hisses, and Sam looks away from Bucky to where Lila is scrambling to her feet and striding across the street.

‘Lila!’ Sam hisses, and looks at Coop.

Coop looks back, as if to say, “it’s too late.”

It is far too late. Lila is already there, talking to Snow White. The Princess seems happy enough to talk to her, but then Lila is pointing, and Sam and Coop are scrambling to get to her, though Sam diverts last-second to grab Bucky, who looks like he’s about to bolt.

‘Bucky,’ he hisses, ‘don’t do it, man. Get the photo first. Lila will bite your ankles to make sure you can’t run.’

Bucky is like a teenager, and if he wasn’t quaking in his boots, it would actually be rather adorable.

‘Isn’t it just for kids, though?’ he asks, and Sam looks at Snow White, who is smiling at them, hand extended for taking.

‘She wants a photo, man,’ Sam says, ‘go get the photo. Smile nicely.’

Bucky looks like he’s about to throw up, but Steve has told them all tales of the charmer Bucky was before the war, the way he could switch it on and have a hundred girls on him in seconds. Some of that must still be trapped inside somewhere, some genetic trait the machine at HYDRA couldn’t erase, because his smile is beautifully charming, a Disney prince with his too-floofy hair barely tamed by the Mickey Mouse ears jammed onto his head some three hours prior by an over-enthusiastic seven-year-old.

The photographer takes the photo, and Sam is prepared to drag Bucky to the nearest bin, because there is colour draining from his face at an alarming rate, not that Bucky had much colour to begin with. Snow White, barely five-four, with her hands still on Bucky’s arm, pulls him down and presses a sweet little kiss to his cheek, one that leaves a large lipstick mark in crimson behind. Bucky’s face goes red to match, and Sam almost takes joy in having the man that nearly killed him barely two years ago fall into place behind him like it’s going to hide him.

Mostly he just waits for the photo and then snapchats it to everyone on his contact list. Bucky pouts, but Sam buys him a caramel cookie from the pavilion to pacify him, and they carry on towards Italy, Bucky happy – at least outwardly – to dawdle along behind Sam and Cooper, Lila’s hand in his, sharing the cookie with her.

* * *

_1998_

‘Are you going to be alright looking after him?’ Clint asks, and Laura wonders, if he wasn’t holding his backpack and a briefcase, would he be wringing his hands? He sounds like he’s wringing his hands.

She looks down at Lucky, who looks back up at her, tongue lolling.

‘I think we’ll be alright, won’t be, boy?’

He yips, and Clint’s lips twitch into a smile. He clutches his stuff a little tighter, knuckles bleaching white, and then he nods, mostly to himself.

‘Alright,’ he says, ‘if you’re sure. You’ve – you’ve got Phil’s number, right? If you need anything, let him know, he’ll do his best.’

‘You’re going for a few days,’ Laura laughs, and steps into him, rocking up onto her toes to loop her arms around his neck, getting a handful of his hair to bring him down the last few inches. ‘I think we can handle a few days.’

 ‘This neighbourhood isn’t great,’ he tells her for the hundredth time. ‘Seriously, if the Tracksuit Mafia shows up, just call Phil, he’ll handle them. They shouldn’t, they know better.’

She hushes him with kisses, stealing the words from his tongue with her own, and he shuts up for a few minutes, only sighing softly, pleasant and agreeable.

‘There,’ she grins, pulling away and stroking his cheeks with both hands as she falls back onto her heels. ‘That’s better. Now, all the numbers I need are on the fridge, all of Lucky’s food is in the cupboard under the sink, there’s a rooftop dinner every evening as long as it isn’t raining, and if I have to leave, I don’t leave without Lucky.’

‘Phil’s a call away, and I’m only a call away from Phil. He’ll pull me out if you’re in serious trouble.’

‘Have you ever had serious trouble here? Not from the Mafia, I mean.’

He shakes his head, and kisses her palm when his mouth brushes. ‘No, not really. But serious trouble for me is an IED in my cereal box.’

‘Well, that’s quite serious for me, too!’

Clint shakes his head and tries not to laugh when she pokes his cheek. ‘No, I mean, I can handle things like break-ins and that. That’s _not_ serious trouble to me. Not that I’ve _had_ break-ins, but you know what I mean?’

‘Not really.’

‘Anything happens, call Phil. If it’s especially bad, he’ll call me back, it’ll be fine.’

Laura looks at him for a long moment, and he looks back, eyes so blue.

‘You’re stalling,’ she whispers, rubs her thumbs across his cheeks. He really ought to have shaved, but he said he didn’t have time. ‘Why don’t you want to go?’

It’s an out, giving him an excuse to make a joke, to say he doesn’t want to leave the dog, anything.

Instead, he says, ‘they want me to make a call, and I’m not sure I _can_ make it.’

He looks so old; he’s just turned twenty-seven, they celebrated his birthday barely a fortnight ago with pizza and beer and sex and he’d not wanted for anything, content in his bed with her pressed naked and warm against him. But here, right here in the pre-dawn light mingling with streetlamps and the naked bulb above their heads, he looks old, worn and well-used, washed one too many times.

‘You’ll do what’s right,’ she tells him, kisses him again, feels him breathe against her mouth, hot and shaky. ‘You always do what’s right. I love you, you dummy, no matter what. You’ll do what’s right. I believe in you.’

‘What if it’s not right? What if the choice I think is right, is wrong?’

‘You can’t think like that,’ she tells him, runs her hands through his hair and kisses his nose, his eyelids, back down to his mouth, bites at his lip. ‘You can’t think like that, honey, you can’t second-guess yourself. You’ll regret everything if you start. You’ve done so much good, don’t undo it all.’

She opens her eyes to find him staring at her.

‘God, I love you,’ he sighs, and she smiles, rubs their noses.

‘I know. Now go. Be a hero. Try not to bleed in a Starbucks.’

 ‘I’ll do my best,’ he chuckles, and kisses her a last time before backing away. ‘Be good, Lucky, you hear? No running off or eating just junk.’

She thinks that if Lucky had opposable thumbs, he’d have saluted. As it is, his tail just wags and his tongue lolls.

* * *

_2015_

It’s late summer, the end of August trailing unnoticed into September. The kids will be starting school soon, some scholarship business Pepper arranged for them, under another name, and the days will be blissfully quiet without them running amok. Not that Clint cares in the least, because if he can hear them – and with his aids, he can hear them a mile away – that means they’re alive and well, and he doesn’t have to worry. Thor is sat at the table with Cooper, and as Clint passes on his way to the other end of the table, he hears him telling his son stories of the stars.

He listens in interest; his knowledge of the stars extends to their use in directing him, and he’s never really thought to look into their stories. Coop loves them, though. Stars. He missed where the fascination began, but he’s not arguing it in the least. His son wants to follow in Jane’s footsteps, he’s more than welcome. It’s probably less dangerous than flinging yourself off of exploding buildings. Lila’s been following Nat around demanding training, and he doesn’t think he could handle both of them going into the not-quite-S.H.I.E.L.D.-not-quite-secret-agent business.

Vision almost sneaks up on him, but Clint sees the shifting shadow and manages to not throw something at him.

‘Thor tells very interesting tales,’ Vision says, quiet, considering, and stands facing the God and the Barton son, back to what Clint’s doing. ‘I have heard every variation of the tales attached, but these are ones I’ve never encountered.’

‘Of course!’ Thor’s voice booms, and Clint’s glad they’re outside, because the house echoes, and he’ll have to turn the volume on his hearing aids down if this continues. ‘Jane knows more of stars than I! I shall have to have her visit again, if you would like, Bartonson.’

Cooper laughs. ‘Call me Coop.’

Clint chuckles, whispers ‘Bartonson’ to himself before carrying on with what he was doing. After a moment, he looks up.

‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ he says to Vision. ‘Bartonson. That’s not the convention, is it?’ He stops and stares at the cutlery. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard Thor say my name, one way or the other.’

Vision looks as baffled as he feels.

Cooper tells Thor that he would very much like to see Jane again, and talk about stars with her, and then he excuses himself to rush down the table and barrel into Clint’s legs.

‘Oof, hello, buddy,’ Clint laughs, ruffles Coop’s hair. ‘Help me lay the table, would you?’

Coop nods, takes the napkin-wrapped cutlery from the table and rushes to the other side to start on those place settings. They’re done in almost no time at all, and Clint pops his back. They got a new mattress after Nathaniel was born, and it’s firmer than the last one.

‘Clint?’

He looks over to where Steve is approaching, glancing over his shoulder every few steps.

‘Bucky’s gone.’

There’s no gut-wrenching terror that should accompany the words, because Clint knows where he’ll be.

‘Did he have Lucky with him?’

‘I think so? I haven’t seen him for a while.’

Clint raises his fingers and wolf-whistles as sharp as he can manage. Cooper wiggles a finger in his ear. There’s no skittering paws and crashing bodies, so Clint tells Coop to let his mother know that he’s heading off to get Bucky back, and Coop rushes off back to the kitchen.

‘Will you be alright?’ Steve asks.

‘Yeah, no problem,’ Clint nods. ‘I know where he’ll be, it’s alright.’

And Bucky is exactly where Clint expected him to be, barefoot and paddling in the stream at the far end of the farm. It’s not technically their land this far out, because they don’t own the woods, but no one comes this way to bother them, and Clint’s not about to tell him no.

‘Steve’s worried,’ he says, by way of greeting, and toes off his trainers and socks to join him in the stream. ‘You shouldn’t wander off.’

‘Sorry,’ Bucky says, and then, with a hesitant smile, ‘ _Dad_.’

Clint grins, and kicks water at him.

‘You bring Lucky with you?’ he asks, and when Bucky nods, toes at some pebbles, Clint hums to himself. ‘Bucky and Lucky. At the stream. Bucky and Lucky.’

‘Please don’t. If you give yourself a hernia, Laura will never forgive me.’

‘You mean she’ll never give you another haircut,’ Clint snorts. ‘And that’s not how hernias work.’

They paddle a little longer; Lucky comes running over with a stick and almost knocks Clint on his arse. Bucky admits that throwing the sticks with his arm gave him longer to think.

‘Sometimes, having longer to think isn’t a good thing,’ Clint says, and Bucky knows this, of course he does, but sometimes you have to be told. ‘Trust me, sometimes, not thinking at all is better.’

‘I’ve done enough not-thinking to last me, thanks.’

Clint nods, scuffs his toes in the silt and watches it swirls in the water. ‘I get that. I do. When Lo – when Laura told me she was expecting Cooper, I took the first mission abroad I could get my hands on and I ran, and I thought and I thought and I thought. I wasn’t ready to be a dad. I wasn’t ready for it. I still don’t feel ready for it now, with Nath. I feel like I’m wading up to my pits in mud, like I’m being pulled under by something I can’t control.’

He smiles then, beams across at Bucky, looking so proud, so alive. He looks like his personnel file, several years out of date. Steve had given him everyone’s files, because he wanted Bucky to know who he was meeting, who Steve counted as his nearest and dearest, the new generation of Howling Commandos, under a new name but with the same heart.

‘But then I stop thinking about it, you know? I stop thinking about _my_ dad. I stop thinking about the fact I could die on the field. I could go on a mission with Nat, or deal with a threat here in the States. I could fight to save New York and lose my life, you know? I don’t think about it. I don’t think about who could find this place. I just don’t. I let it all go like water between my toes. And the mud recedes, and I can walk, I can run, I can _fly_. It’s hard, separating you from your work. It took me a long time to realise that. Here, I’m not Hawkeye, I’m not an Avenger, I’m just Clint Barton. Lame joke-maker extraordinaire. I’m just a husband and a father and I have a tractor that never works and an unfinished house. That’s it, that’s all I am.’

Bucky thinks about it. ‘But what am I? If I’m not the Winter Soldier, what am I? Bucky Barnes is – it’s like he’s lost.’

‘Then find him,’ Clint says, as though it’s the easiest thing in the world. ‘Trace him down and bring him back.’

‘It sounds difficult.’

‘Then we’ll help you. Me and Laura, the Avengers. Steve. We will _all_ help you.’

Bucky looks at him. His hair is getting too long again, hanging limp against his brow with sun-hot sweat.

‘You’ll be alright, kiddo,’ Clint tells him.

‘I’m ninety-five,’ Bucky tells him.

‘Ha, you’re what, thirty at best? Get to forty-five and then come back to me on it. Come on, we’d better head back before Steve sends everyone else out too.’

* * *

_2015_

'Wanda doesn’t know,’ Clint says, as he wheels Pietro to the ramp. 'She thinks I’ve gone to finalise her clearance files. I mean I have, and when you’re alright, I’ll file yours too. I’m on both of your files as your legal guardian so that’s something.’

'We won’t call you dad,’ Pietro grumbles.

‘I’m not asking you to.’

‘And you’re not legally anything. We aren’t underage.’

Clint carries on as though they hasn’t digressed. 'Well, Wanda thinks you’re still dead, and I’m the only one on the farm that knows. She can’t get into my head, so it was safe.’

'She’s going to punch you in the face,’ Pietro warns.

'She can have one free punch,’ Clint promises. 'We’ve got to get you home first.’

'I can walk.’

'No, you can’t. Cho said to not let you out of the chair until we’re sure your powers aren’t batshit insane.’

Pietro grumbles, but Clint’s wearing his domestic aids and can’t translate.

'Be nice,’ he says, and Pietro lets him haul him up and into the seat on the quinjet.

It’s only because Dr Cho had never used the Cradle on anything other than unenhanced human skin and bone that she was insisting Pietro be babied. She had no exact clue how his powers worked, or how being riddled with bullets had altered them. In his observation at the medical facility, he’d displayed minor incapability in controlling his speed – that is to say, he kept running into the wall and smashing himself into every surface – and so Helen had put him under the grand term of “bed rest”. She was sure he’d be up and about in a week or so, but his body needed time to adjust in peace and quiet. Clint’s not sure how he convinced her the farm was the right place for that.

The ride is quiet; Clint flies in silence, and he’s sure Pietro dozes off in the hour it takes.

Laura knows what to look out for regarding the quinjet, and comes out to meet them. Clint’s just getting Pietro back into his chair when he feels the shift of the air that generally signals Wanda about to start.

'Clint?’ she yells, and Laura stops to intercept her.

'It’s alright,’ she says, catching Wanda’s arms and holding her away from the jet as the ramp drops into the grass. 'It’s alright. He’s alright.’

'Pietro?’ Wanda calls, voice cracking.

Clint grunts and Pietro knows he’s considering kicking the chair down the ramp and letting it go from there. But Clint’s responsible, keeps his ward from tumbling over the grass and wheels him out to meet them.

Wanda does punch him in the face, but then she’s dragging him down to kiss both his cheeks and his forehead, babbling thanks over and over until the words blur with tears. Then she turns to her brother, and Clint backs away to give them space. Laura goes to him, arms around his waist.

'I thought it might be,’ she hums, 'but I didn’t want to make it a real thought. Just in case.’

'He’s going to stay too.’

She nods. 'He’ll have to borrow your clothes until I can get him into town. Do people know his face?’

'I don’t think so. There weren’t news crews. As long as he doesn’t shout about it, you’ll be alright.’

'For secret agents, you aren’t very secretive.’

'It was a flaw in the plan,’ he agrees with a grin. 'I could wear a purple mask if you want.’

'That won’t be necessary. Those sunglasses you’ve got will be enough.’

He chuckles, and nudges Laura to head inside. Wanda will bring Pietro in when they’re ready, and there’s no point hanging around.

'Best get the other guest room made up,’ Laura says, 'can you give me a hand clearing up? We’ve got everything from doing the nursery in there still.’

Clint nods. 'I’ll clear some room in the shed, and start moving everything down.’

When they get into the guest room, they look at each other.

'Coop’s room?’ Clint asks.

'Coop’s room,’ Laura agrees, and goes straight to call him back in whilst Clint tracks down the camp bed and spare blankets.

* * *

_2015_

‘Laura?’

She looks up, smiles before turning back to the mixing bowl. ‘Hello, darling.’

When there’s nothing more forthcoming, she looks up again, eyebrow quirking.

‘You alright?’ she asks, ‘not like you to linger.’

It’s exactly like Bucky to linger, but he doesn’t bring it up. He fidgets on his feet, and then nods to himself.

‘Stand still,’ he says, and she quirks the other eyebrow.

‘Okay? Want me to close my eyes too? Are you up to something with the kids?’

‘No,’ he assures her, something too genuine on his face, and she’s known Clint for too long to not recognise honesty when she sees it, something raw and open, laid out across his sleeves for everyone to see. ‘No, I think they’re with – they were with Thor.’

She nods, and then asks what _he’s_ up to.

‘I would like to – try something,’ he says, and she feels her heart skip a beat. Anyone trying anything is generally never going to end well, but she’s willing to hear him out. ‘Closing your eyes may help.’

‘Bucky,’ she says, not in a warning tone, but creeping towards it. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Laura,’ he says, serious, a frown flitting across his pretty face. ‘Please.’

She settles her weight, straightens her shoulders, shuts her eyes. ‘Okay, eyes shut.’

He moves, steps deliberately audible, and she feels the alternating heat of his skin and chill of the metal of his arms, and then those same arms slip under hers, wrap around her back. Bucky’s several inches taller than her, and she gets her face pressed into his chest, mostly, she assumes, by accident, because he’s very rigid and unwieldy against her, clearly trying to keep his distance whilst making it as natural as possible.

‘You know,’ she says, ‘hugs are better if they go both ways.’

‘No,’ he says, with a shake of his head that she feels, his chin brushing her crown. ‘No, I don’t think I’m – ready. For that. Just – this is okay.’

She’s fine with that, whatever it is he’s doing, whatever it is he needs. If he wants to hug her, he’s more than welcome, and when he’s done, he backs away, assessments clearly running through his mind at a thousand miles an hour.

‘Okay,’ he says with a nod, mostly to himself. ‘Okay. That was okay. Thank you. For – for letting me do that.’

Laura smiles. ‘You’re welcome. Any time you need a hug, come find me.’

He smiles back, that lopsided grin she’s come to love as dearly as she loves any of her children’s. ‘I will,’ he assures her, ‘and I’ll let you know when I’m okay with being hugged back.’

* * *

_1992_

It’s a rainy day, but Hell’s Kitchen, it seems, is either rainy, or foggy, or blisteringly hot, maybe some combination of all three. The hot, wet days are the worst, air hanging low and clogging up senses across the board. Everything gets sticky and muddied and faded, and God, Clint hates it. But Hell’s Kitchen has a place for him, even if it’s not a very good place. He’s got no grades to his name, no high school diploma, no certificates of education to say he can do his sums and spell his own name without error.

Hell’s Kitchen – or rather, Fogwell’s Gym – doesn’t care. So long as he can throw a punch, and throw fights, no one cares what he does, what he can and can’t do.

He kind of, in some deeply-rotten place in his core, wishes that they did. Someone, anyone, really.

The door creaks open, but he almost doesn’t hear it – almost. At this point, he wouldn’t be all that surprised if he didn’t hear it; the mere fact his hearing aids aren’t broken is a miracle. Sure, they’re on the blink, they’re barely functioning, but they _are_. That’s more than last month.

‘Mister Barton?’

Like a puppy maybe, not used to his ears, his head twitches, cocks to the side with better ear raised. Otherwise, he totally ignores the man in the suit he can see from the corner of his eye, and continues punching the bag. A little too hard, perhaps, because it swings too far to one side. A swift kick sends it careening back the other way to meet his knuckles with a crack of what might be bone.

‘My name is Agent Phil Coulson, I’m here with – ‘

‘Sorry, I already have an agent.’

Coulson smiles, and almost – almost – steps into the path of a roundhouse kick.

‘I’m fairly certain that kicks are not allowed in boxing, Mister Barton. Perhaps you should consider an alternate career. If you can fight against a moving target as well as you fight a punching bag, I’m sure you could make more money than – ‘

Here, he pauses, pulls a notebook from his pocket and leafs through it.

‘Three hundred? This is a week or two out of date now, has your pay increased?’

‘Three hundred,’ Clint replies, and grabs the bag. The wraps pulled tight around his hands and wrists are yellowing with sweat and stained red in places. It could be wear from the leather. But his knuckles are scabbed.

‘Three hundred bucks per match,’ Coulson continues, quiet, contemplative. The two men by the door shift. ‘With half going to your agent. You can barely afford rent to the point you haven’t bothered this month. You’ll get evicted, and then what? You’d have more for food, I suppose. But we have – information – about your health, Mister Barton. Three hundred will not pay for upkeep on subpar hearing aids. Not the way you use them, anyway.’

‘I take them out before a match,’ Clint tells him, glaring at the worn leather.

Rain lashes the windows. Coulson is bone dry and immaculate; Clint looks like a wet dog, sweat-wet with his hair sticking to his face. Long hair is not a good look on him, but Coulson had seen the buzz-cut he first had on arrival in Hell’s Kitchen. It wasn’t a good look.

Coulson looks at him, standing there with heaving shoulders and a V of sweat down his back, glaring like a bull at the faded red of the punching bag.

‘Hawkeye,’ he says, and catches Clint’s wrist in his hand, fist barely inches from his face. ‘Please don’t do that. I apologise. I shouldn’t have called you that. Do you prefer Barton? Could I call you Clint?’

‘I’d rather you called me _nothing_ ,’ Clint snarls, and rips himself free of Coulson’s grip, putting the punching bag between them.

Coulson, in a bold move, holds it steady, though Clint sees the bleaching skin of his knuckles as Clint punches harder. He only has to punch or kick a few inches off-target to break his hand. But he’s never missed a target. Another punch, and Coulson’s foot slides back to steady himself. Clint smiles, drops his heel into it and sends Coulson back two or so inches.

‘You’re strong,’ Coulson remarks, as though this is particularly revelatory to him. ‘But you’re fast, too. I’d bet you’re faster than you are strong.’

‘Do you want to test that,’ Clint snarls, so sure of Coulson’s response that he doesn’t give him the dignity of a question.

‘Not really, no,’ Coulson replies, and Clint can see him look at himself. ‘A suit’s not really good for boxing.’

‘Then leave. I have a match to train for.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Coulson says, and abruptly lets go of the bag before Clint has a chance to check himself, and he ends up knocking the bag flying, staggering forward several steps before getting his feet back under control. Coulson pulls his notebook out again and flicks through. ‘Where are we – the fourteenth. Yes, here we are. You have a fight tomorrow evening against one Brett Gray. You were offered a sum of three thousand – oh, thousands! That’s nice – to throw the fight in his favour. I assume you’ve accepted it?’

Clint’s jaw tightens, a tic appearing as his lips curl.

‘I accepted it,’ he whispers.

Coulson doesn’t look disappointed, not really. A little saddened, maybe. But not disappointed. It almost hurts more, but then Clint wonders why he cares. Coulson knows him, clearly, knows who he is – or was – and what he can do.

‘That’s a shame,’ Coulson says. ‘I could offer you a better deal, if you’re interested.’

Clint studies him, looks at the men at the door. He swallows, blinks sweat from his eyes.

‘A better deal.’

Coulson smiles. It’s so warm and sweet Clint can feel his teeth rotting.

‘A job, Mister Barton, if you’d be interested. Where you can put your skills to use, in the world, where it _counts_. And not here, in a mouldy old gym where no one can see you. It would be a shame to see you waste away in Hell’s Kitchen.’

Clint runs a hand over his face, through his hair. It might suit him, if it wasn’t sweat holding his hair back against his scalp. They’ll soon sort that out, though, Coulson thinks, and continues to stand there, waiting.

‘I’ve,’ Clint starts. ‘I’ve done a lot of shit for money. Had to, to make it here from fucking Massachusetts. But I’m not going to be a gun for hire.’

‘Our notes indicated a preference for bows.’

Clint gives him a flat look. There’s something about the redness under his eyes, the patchy stubble on his jaw, the wrinkle of his nose, that makes him look like a grumpy little kitten. Intelligence puts his height at five-ten, which makes him taller than Phil, but that makes him no less a kitten. He’s barely on his own two feet, barely able to feed himself, let alone survive in the wild.

‘We aren’t mercenaries, Clint,’ Coulson says, gentle, like he’s cooing at a cornered dog, rabid and feral. ‘We’re – we’re the line.’

‘Police?’

‘No. We’re above the police. Above the military, the government, everything. We go over all of them. We defend the world against the things that go bump in the night.’

‘ _Ghostbusters_ , then.’

Coulson smiles. ‘You saw that?’

Clint swallows thickly. His stomach growls.

‘I’m sorry,’ Coulson exclaims then. ‘I should have brought you food, I didn’t even consider! If – If I go to the nearest take-out – that’s, um. It’s just down the road, right? I’m sure I saw a pizza place. You’ll still be here?’

Clint is almost amused.

‘I’ll still be here.’

Coulson takes one of the guards with him, and leaves the other to “keep Mister Barton company.” By the time he’s back, two pizza boxes in his hands in the delivery bag to keep them warm and dry, the guard is unconscious on the floor and Clint Barton is nowhere to be seen.

* * *

_2016_

Santorini is hot. It’s hot and bright and absolutely _wonderful_.

‘Oh,’ Laura sighs, just looking at the view as Clint hauls their suitcases into the boot of the rental, and Tony had really gotten everything in order. Well, Pepper had gotten everything in order, and Tony had provided the money. ‘This is gorgeous.’

Clint’s eyes burn a hole in the back of her sundress.

‘Yes,’ he agrees, ‘she is.’

She turns her head to smile at him, braid falling over her shoulder. Something in Clint’s chest does something he’s sure is bad for his health. He ignores it.

‘Do you know where you’re going? Tony didn’t give me any directions.’

‘I know,’ Clint nods. ‘He gave me a Sat Nav.’

‘Because _you_ trust Sat Navs,’ she chuckles, and goes back to him, arms looping gentle around his neck, fingers combing the hair at his nape. ‘I hope you enjoy yourself, you know, and don’t get stressed out. The kids are in good hands. We’re safe here. No one knows who we are, and those that do don’t know we’re here.’

‘I know,’ Clint assures her, bumps noses. ‘It’s in my nature at this point. Worrying about everyone else. How do you think I ended up with – wait, what’s the count now? Eleven?’

‘We’ll say eleven,’ Laura laughs, and presses a kiss to his nose. ‘Eleven children. How we found the time, I don’t know.’

He grins. ‘Well, they shouldn’t have followed me home.’

‘I seem to recall you inviting at least five of them.’

‘Semantics. Come on, let’s go to the hotel.’

The look he gives her as he lets her go with his fingertips blazing fire down her arms leaves little in her mind about what he plans to do when they get there.

(As it turns out, he plans to check that the windows and doors are secure enough for his liking. Then he changes into something a little lighter than the jeans he’d been wearing. _Then_ he kisses her silly. She’s known him for twenty years now, if not more. It’s hard to remember a time she _didn’t_ know him as well as she knew herself, and it doesn’t bother her that he has his routines. They’ve saved his life, and hers. She can’t fault that.)

A few hours later, they’re ready to head out again, to explore the beaches and the town, to see what this quiet corner of the world has for them. Laura’s fingers fit between Clint’s perfectly, and she smiles when she feels his ring. He wears it when he’s home, when he’s not got to hide her away, to pretend, but the novelty of him wearing it in public, of wearing it where people can see, that is _amazing_. She pulls their hands up to look at it in the sunlight.

‘It’s still good, right?’ Clint asks, watching her looking at it.

‘Mm. Still good. Still does what I need it to do.’

‘Oh?’

She smiles, letting their hands drop into the space between them, squeezing his hand a little.

‘Still tells me you’re mine.’

He snorts. ‘You ever doubted it?’

‘Absolutely not, but seeing it on your hand is nice.’

After some deliberation, they go to the beach for a walk.

‘Do you think we could take the kids to the beach?’ Clint asks, and Laura hums.

‘Probably. They’d enjoy it. Lucky would like a walk on the beach, too.’

‘Probably,’ he agrees. ‘Though I'm not sure I’d like going into the sea to get them back.’

‘You’d _love_ it,’ Laura teases, bumping him with a hip. ‘You’d get to be big strong dad of the year.’

‘You say that like I’m not big strong dad of the year every time I set foot out the door.’

She laughs, tells him that Avenging doesn’t count, because he’s not dad of the world.

‘I can try,’ he sniffs, smiling.

* * *

_1997_

Day five of forced recuperative leave, and Clint is bored senseless. He’s so bored he’s been reduced to vegetating on the couch watching daytime talk shows. He drinks coffee and eats biscuits and sleeps, and sure Laura’s been over a couple of times after work, stayed the night, but his days are long and without varied entertainment. He’s currently watching Springer, half-asleep and barely listening.

He’s also currently trapped under his seventy-three pound dog, but that’s another matter entirely.

‘Lucky,’ he grunts periodically, but the dog shuffles and proceeds to ignore him, drooling on his chest and pressing all of his weight into Clint’s bladder, which, after five cups of coffee, is not really up for the challenge.

Neither are the broken ribs, but he’s had worse than a dog’s head lying on them.

At least Lucky’s warm and soft under his hands when he pets him.

‘Come on, boy,’ he tries, but the dog huffs. ‘Lucky, I need a piss, come on. Down, boy.’

Lucky knows instructions, knows what down means, he _knows_ , Clint spent a month teaching him all the typical instructions and tricks, and he usually follows them, but today, apparently, he wants to cuddle. Clint wouldn’t mind, but his bladder can’t take seventy-three pounds of warm dog lying on it.

He tries to wriggle out from him, but the dog isn’t having it, and Clint bemoans his ready acceptance of the dog climbing on the furniture. If he’d said no to Lucky climbing on the couch, he’d never have this trouble. Laura told him, the first time Lucky wriggled his way into bed between them and shoved Clint onto the floor, that if he’d stopped it, he wouldn’t currently be lying on the floor instead of in his bed. It was his own fault, and he had no one else to blame.

Who could blame him, though? The dog had almost died for him, and he thinks that deserves sharing the bed. Besides, at the time, he’d had no one to share it with, so it hadn’t mattered. ‘Course, now that Laura’s here – and here to stay! – that’s changed, but Clint knows it’s too late to train Lucky out of it.

Not that he would anyway.

But God, the fat bastard needs to get off his bladder.

‘Lucky,’ Clint whines. ‘Lucky, please. _Down_.’

The Lab lifts his head, and then barks, tail wagging and tongue lolling. The act puts more weight on his chest, and subsequently, Clint’s gut, and Clint whines again.

‘Lucky,’ he tries again, because he’s not above begging. ‘Please move.’

Another bark. Clint tries to get his hands under the dog to shove him off, but he can’t get the leverage with his entire mid-section aching like hell. Trying to shove with a leg gets much the same response, even after Clint uses the foot he’s got on the floor to brace himself.

Positive he’s going to have to buy a new couch because there’s no way to get this ridiculous one-eyed dog off of him, Clint gives one last heave and gives up.

 ‘Bad dog,’ he huffs, and rubs his face.

Lucky’s expression turns troubled.

‘Down,’ Clint says, and points at the floor.

A moment passes. Clint points harder, and Lucky slips onto the floor, sits with his tail between his legs and his eyes solemn.

‘Good boy,’ Clint says, pets his head and stumbles to his feet and into the bathroom.

When he’s done, he comes back and finds a few treats for him, offers them on his palm. Lucky stares at him, still looking solemn.

‘You’re a good dog,’ Clint tells him, gives his ears a rub, ‘but I’m sore today and I really needed the bathroom. You gotta move when I say, pizza dog, you just gotta.’

Clint is positive Lucky doesn’t actually understand him, but he recognises his nickname, at least, and perks up a little. He takes the treats, and when Clint lays back down on the couch, he doesn’t lie on him, but instead lies next to him, head on the spare bit of couch next to his owner’s ribs, tail thumping lazily against the floor. Clint pets his head, and they watch the last guest confrontation on Springer before heading down the park for a walk.

* * *

_2012_

‘Lila, please put some pants on, I’m not going to ask again.’

Four and sure of herself – so like her dad, Laura thinks, planting her hands on her hips and settling in to wait – Lila tries to out-stare her mother. Laura is prepared to wait for a maximum of ten minutes before she puts her daughter’s trousers on herself.

‘Delilah Anne Barton,’ she says, when the ten minutes are up, and her daughter’s expression is still a perfect match for Clint’s vaguely disgruntled resting face, ‘I have had enough of you this morning. You are putting pants on, and we’re going to get groceries.’

Lila’s nose wrinkles, her eyes squinting. Laura is ready to lunge and get her by the back of her T-shirt. The girl is fast, but nowhere near as fast as she is.

‘Can I get Froot Loops?’ she asks, and even dares to be meek about it.

Laura gives her a steady look, and begins herding her towards the utility room to find her errant pants.

‘If you behave,’ she says, ‘and talk nicely to your brother. It’s his turn to choose cereals, but he might agree if you ask nicely.’

Cooper is too nice a boy, she thinks; Lila walks all over him. She’ll make sure, next time Clint’s home, that he has a talk with his eldest.

Once Lila’s got her trousers on – pink capris with a pretty floral embroidery, and her shoes follow naturally, thank God – Laura herds her back to the living room to wait.

‘Coop!’ she calls, and Coop appears in the doorway to the kitchen.

‘I was with Lucky,’ he explains, and the dog appears at his side. ‘We found a worm. I didn’t let him eat it, though.’

Laura laughs, and gives him a quick once-over. She doesn’t care if she’s going around the supermarket looking like hell on earth, but she doesn’t want a repeat of the last time. Honestly, Lila falls flat on her face in a puddle, and suddenly Laura is the devil incarnate. What was she supposed to do? They were just under an hour away from home, and she’d not thought Lila was going to go jumping around like the over-excited, energetic four-year-old that she is. In hindsight, she should have known better, and she always keeps a change of clothes for both of them in the truck now, but that’s utterly beside the point.

Thank God Clint hadn’t been there, she supposes.

Both of the kids sit nicely in the car on the way to the store, which is a bit more of a jaunt than she’d like it to be, but Coop understands the need for secrecy, because he’d been old enough to understand what happened in New York, and they’re starting to broach the subject with Lila now, but she’s at That Age. Coop was the same, just before Manhattan and Loki and the Avengers, demanding to know why Dad was almost never home, why when he was he was always hurt. Lila is more interested in knowing that Dad beat up the other guy than she is that he’s hurt at all. It makes Laura worry, but Clint seems sure she’ll come out the other side of it utterly disinterested in fighting.

(‘Did you?’ Laura had asked him, and Clint had looked guiltily at anything not her.)

They reach the store at just the right time, just after the morning rush, but before the lunch hour starts, and she asks if they want to ride in the cart. Lila does, but Cooper wants to walk and help her get the things from the list. Such a sweet boy. And honestly, having Lila in the cart – she hadn’t asked nicely for her cereal of choice, and is now in a mood, but at least she’s not squalling like she usually does – is easier for Laura.

She re-ties her hair into her messy bun, shoves her sunglasses onto her crown, and off they go. Coop has the list, and he finds the items as they go around the aisles with a careful methodical swipe of his finger that Laura has never grown tired of seeing. Honestly, her children have turned out pretty great, and she wouldn’t change either of them for the world. 

As they’re debating what they want for dinner – and yes, Coop, they’d make enough for Dad, too, don’t worry – Laura feels that familiar prickle down her spine. It’s a feeling she’s grown used to over the years. It’s not the feeling she’s had in dark alleys, or when Clint’s abruptly left her side on date night and come back with blood half-hidden behind his jacket. Thankfully, it’s just the Disapproving Suburban Mom stare feeling, and she can deal with that. She can handle other mothers thinking they’re better than her.

Casually, she turns, as if to scan the opposite aisle and see if there’s anything they could want or need, and clocks the two overly-primped women with a trolley just a little bit down the aisle, already eyeing up for under-her-breath judgement. Clint might be deaf, but Laura is a mother of two, her hearing is fantastic.

Turning back, she asks the kids if they’ve decided what they want. She adjusts her sunglasses as Coop explains that Dad likes bacon, right? Maybe they could do something with bacon. Laura runs down a list of recipes in her head, listens with one ear to the trolley of the women behind her as she considers.

‘We could do a Hunter’s Chicken,’ she offers, ‘that’s chicken wrapped in bacon with a barbeque sauce.’

Lila considers this and Coop asks if they’ve had it before. When Laura assures them that they haven’t, but they’ve had chicken and bacon and barbeque before, just not together, they seem eager for the possibility.

‘And because it’s got to be marinated overnight,’ Laura says, ‘it’ll be ready for when Dad comes home.’

There, she thinks, there it is. The prickle’s at its height. The under-breath comments are about to start. As she sends Coop off to the other end of the aisle to find the barbeque sauce while she finds the meats, she hears the whispering. Comments about her choice in dinner, about her letting Coop wander off when she’s looking at something else, about the length of her son’s hair, hell, even about her jeans.

Laura pinches her lips between her teeth, stares resolutely at the packet of chicken breasts in her hand. She stares hard, breathes. After all these years, Clint’s begun to rub off on her. He never could leave well enough alone, always the first to leap to her defence. Thank God he’s not here, he’d be running his mouth. She wants to, but she won’t.

The packet creaks in her hand, and she straightens up. She won’t snap at her, she won’t. She won’t start a fight in front of the kids. Nope, not happening.

She puts the chicken down in the trolley and turns back to look at the bacon, and then she hears a hushed comment about the fat content of bacon and what a horrible idea it is to give it to children, and before they’ve finished, Laura is whirling around so fast her trainers squeak on the lino.

‘Their father,’ she starts, feels the weight of Clint’s ring around her neck, tucked into her bra as always, ‘my _husband_ , is a soldier. He is out there fighting to save people like you. He is out there risking his life so that you can sleep in your bed at night without a care in the world beyond your forty-five degree cone. Did you know he almost died a year ago? He was in New York, during the Chitauri invasion. He was there, on the frontlines, fighting to save people – the _world_ – from _aliens_. Where were your husbands, may I ask?’

The women were clearly not expecting Laura to hear them, or to retaliate. Lila stares open-mouthed at her mother. Before she has a chance for words to bubble up out of her throat, Laura puts a hand on her head, smoothes it over her hair, straightens her outgrowing fringe, and Lila’s words fall back into her belly.

‘Oh,’ says one.

‘Um,’ says the other.

‘Well,’ continues the first, ‘he was, he was at work. Here, at – at the college.’

‘And mine was – at the Medical Centre.’

Laura swallows, opens her mouth, but Coop has a better sense of timing than his father, it seems.

‘Momma! Momma, I don’t know which one you want!’

She offers a flat stare to the women, and when she turns to push the trolley down to Coop, she sees Lila doing her immaculate replication of Clint’s resting face again. On a baby-faced preschooler, it’s somehow more disconcerting than on a ruggedly handsome, baby-faced thirty-something world-saving soldier.

 Coop points out the sauces with one hand, seeks out his mother’s hand with the other, and Laura doesn’t miss the way he squeezes. She squeezes back, and asks which he’d like more. He chooses the sweet, and she puts it in the trolley.

‘Momma?’ Coop asks, when they turn the corner into the cereal aisle. ‘Do you – are you mad?’

‘No, sweetie. Not really. I’m just – you can’t judge people based on what you see, you know? You don’t know who they are. What their story is. With us, they didn’t know that your dad was a soldier.’

‘He’s an Av – ‘

‘Cooper.’

He snaps his jaws shut at Laura’s sharp tone.

‘They didn’t know what your dad does, so they made a judgement about what we were making for dinner,’ she continues, softer. ‘It’s not nice, but it happens. I shouldn’t have said anything, to be honest. They weren’t worth it, and I’ve heard worse things.’

Coop eyes her, and when he comes back from choosing his cereal – something healthy that makes Lila pull faces – he asks if it made her feel better anyway.

She smiles, ruffles his hair.

‘Yeah,’ she says, soft. ‘Yeah, I feel better.’


	4. Don't Mind the Dog

_1997_

Laura is busy, so Clint says, doing some bullshit with the office, so she can’t afford the time to take care of the dog.

‘And I have the time to spare?’ Fury had snorted when Clint first mentioned it. ‘It might have escaped your notice, kid, but I’m running a tight ship here.’

Clint had looked over his shoulder at the screaming cadets running riot across the field.

‘Well, it’s a bit leaky,’ Fury had agreed. ‘Alright, Barton. I’ll look after your dog. When it dies, don’t blame me.’

Clint had walked away muttering to himself. Fury didn’t need high-powered hearing aids to know he was plotting elaborate ways of killing his boss in the event his dog died.

When Fury goes to Clint’s apartment – which is, in itself, a mistake, because the urge to empty the whole thing and just start again is overwhelming, and this moronic bird-boy has a steady relationship verging on marriage? – Lucky circles him, sniffs at his coat, and then sits patiently.

‘I’m Nick,’ he says to the dog. ‘Bar – Clint asked me to look after you while he’s on a mission for me.’

Lucky’s tail wags at the mention of his owner, and Fury is almost positive the dog is processing his words like it understands English. Not, he thinks, that he’d understand English with the way Clint speaks it, but that’s probably harsh. After a moment, Lucky’s tongue lolls and his tail wags harder, and he gets up to lead Fury into the kitchen, pawing at the cupboard under the sink. It doesn’t take long to find his food bowls either, still unwashed in the sink, and honestly, Clint.

Fury makes a note to himself, as he shucks his coat and starts on cleaning up after ridiculous boy, to ask Laura how she puts up with him.

(Laura will just smile at him, and offer him the bowl of cake mix that she’s just finished spooning into cupcake papers. He doesn’t miss that she’s swirled purple food colour into them.)

Once everything’s washed and dried, and he’s found places for it all to go, Fury opens the cupboard and gets the food out. He’s quietly pleased to note that while Clint may be shit at looking after himself, and may live in apartment suited to a bachelor away from home for the first time and not a man in his mid-twenties with a steady girlfriend, he spares no expense on the dog, and has clearly been to a vet about the best food for him.

He’s even taped instructions to the back for, Fury presumes, when he has concussion and can’t remember his name, never mind how much food he needs to give his best friend. There’s something sad about that, about seeing him so alone that he has to tape reminders to himself all over his apartment. Sure, the paper is old, with several layers of tape where it’s gone on the back of half a dozen bags, but the fact it’s there at all is sad.

Fury tries to tell himself that it’s for times like this, when someone comes to look after the dog and Clint hasn’t had time to run down the instructions, but honestly, he doesn’t like lying to himself.

After feeding the dog, Fury finds himself wandering around the apartment, taking in the life Clint’s apparently making for himself. After a few steps, he turns around and goes back into the kitchen to find a trash bag, and makes short work of empty cartons, bottles and a half-eaten pizza – he’ll have to get medical to take a look at him when the boy gets home – left piling up on the coffee table. It’s a shame he’s pretty much useless at cleaning up after himself, because the apartment’s nice under all that; more spacious than he’d have expected of Brooklyn and the price Clint was paying for it, and though sparse, the decor was nice.

He doesn’t go into Clint’s bedroom, doesn’t want to even _think_ about it, and when he can bring himself to brave the bathroom, he’s pleasantly surprised by how clean it is. The shower-bath combination could do with a clean, but the toilet (seat down, bless him, he’s been taught well) is spotless. There are wet towels on the floor, and Fury hooks them over the radiator to dry before leaving.

Lucky is sat by the door.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asks.

The Lab scratches at the door, whines.

It takes Nick what feels like too long to realise that he wants to go for a walk.

‘Alright, boy,’ he says, and looks for a lead. ‘Where’s your lead?’

Lucky barks, and then paws at the door again.

‘You’re not going out without a lead. Show me the lead.’

After a few more barks and door-scratching, Fury comes to the conclusion that either Clint has trained the dog so well he doesn’t need a lead, or Lucky is not stupid enough to try and find it in this mess of an apartment.

‘If you run away, I’m not taking the blame,’ Fury tells him, and opens the door.

As it turns out, Lucky is incredibly well-trained, and happily walks alongside Fury as he strides off down the street. He barks any time he stops because of a distraction, and more than once, he stops to bark at something that Fury, upon inspection, discovers is petty crime.

He eyes the dog as they carry on down the street after stopping an attempted mugging, and the dog plods along, tail wagging and not looking back at him.

Fury follows signs to a park near where Clint lives, and Lucky shoots off, coming back with a stick within ten seconds. He drops it at Fury’s feet and sits patiently, tongue lolling like he’s grinning.

Patting the dog’s head, Fury takes the stick and throws it a reasonable distance. When Lucky brings it back and waits some more, he throws it harder. After a half-dozen further throws, he’s chucking the stick as hard as he can, and Lucky races after it. In the interim between throwing it and getting it back, Fury wonders if Clint’s ever shot an arrow for the dog to fetch. It’s something he’d do.

Lucky tires after a healthy while, and sits panting at Fury’s feet.

‘Do you have any toys?’ he asks, because he hadn’t seen any, but then, he’d not looked for dog toys.

He doesn’t know why he expected the dog to answer.

They head back to the apartment, and Fury tops his food bowls up, clearing a space on the couch and getting some digital paperwork done. When Lucky’s done eating, he goes and curls up on his bed, which is about the only clean spot in the apartment, and goes to sleep. Fury pauses in the middle of a read-through of one of Phil’s reports, looking over at the dog, and stops entirely to watch him dream, back leg almost kicking him off his bed.

Fury huffs out a laugh, and when Lucky rolls over, legs everywhere, he turns back to his work.

* * *

_2016_

He wakes with a jolt at twenty-two minutes past two. For a second, he’s not sure what woke him; it wasn’t a nightmare, and it’s not Laura shaking him awake. It’s not the kids, it’s not the Strays.

‘Clint?’ Laura whispers, and he sits upright, swings out of bed.

‘I hear it,’ he whispers back, and yanks on his pyjama bottoms, kicked off at some point in the night and tangled into the sheets.

There’s something out there, something coming closer, heavy and fast. He listens close, finds the controller for his aids, turns it as high as he can stand, nods a little in time.

‘Hulk,’ he hisses, because now that he can hear the noise properly, he knows it as well as he knows any big green monster.

The aids go back down to a normal level, and he goes to the door.

‘Don’t let the kids out,’ he says, ‘if he’s looking for a fight, I’ll give him one.’

Laura gives him that same exasperated look she always gives him.

‘Be careful, you ass,’ she tells him, and he grins, sweeps down the hall to collect his bow and arrows, and heads up to the roof.

He sits with an arrow notched, ready to raise and fire as soon as he’s got a visual. After several missions with the Hulk, he knows the guy’s behaviour, knows how he’s feeling from the way he runs around. As he comes lumbering through the trees, somehow avoiding knocking them over, though several birds go flying up with indignant squawks, Clint breathes a sigh of relief.

Whatever had stressed Bruce out enough to make him Hulk out isn’t following him; if Clint didn’t know better, he’d say the Hulk was going for a leisurely stroll in the moonlight.

But he does know better and he shifts on the roof, braces his foot better against the tiles. He should have put shoes on, but he’s done worse than have his bare feet on the roof.

Honestly, Clint doesn’t doubt Bruce’s ability to remember everything, the man’s practically eidetic, but he hadn’t been in the best form when he came to the farm. In fact, Clint distinctly remembers Bruce sitting huddled under a blanket and staring blankly at the jet’s wall without response, so he shouldn’t know how to get to the farm. Maybe the Hulk has some kind of homing beacon on places Bruce feels safe in. Maybe that’s why he’s coming here.

God, whatever’s following him is going to be a battle. Not for the first time, Clint kicks himself.

After a few seconds more pass, the Hulk comes crashing through the treeline and onto the field. He’s big and green and Clint scans him for injury, but sees nothing, not even a speck of dirt. He’s perfectly okay, and he doesn’t look stressed, just tired. Grouchy. It’s no different to Bruce’s resting face, and Clint relaxes incrementally.

He doesn’t let go of the bow and arrow, though.

He watches the Hulk spin around, looking about the farm, taking everything in. Then he sees the pond and makes a beeline for it, dropping to the floor with a rumbling thud, and his hand slaps against the water. A grin spreads across his face at the splash, and a light flicks on under Clint. Lila’s room.

‘Lila, no,’ he hisses, even though he knows Lila can’t hear him. ‘God, Lila, don’t.’

Lila is too good at sneaking though, and Nathaniel is crying. Laura is only one woman, and Clint can’t pull her away from their son to go after their daughter, but neither can he leave the Hulk unattended.

‘Damn it,’ he whispers to himself, and reasons that he’s done worse rescues.

She probably just wants to have a look up close. It’s one thing seeing the big green Avenger on the TV, but it’s another having him splashing in the pond in your back garden at two-thirty in the morning. At least, that’s what Clint’s telling himself, because if he doesn’t, he might actually have a panic attack.

(His heart hasn’t pounded this hard since the first time he lost sight of Nat on the field, that gut-wrenching terror that he’d gotten her killed on their first mission. Coulson had been running support that day, laid up with injuries, and had tried to talk him out of a heart attack. He’d learnt to keep calm under pressure very quickly after that.)

The kitchen door cracks open, and light spills out onto the porch. Clint holds his breath as the Hulk looks up, and his knuckles bleach around his bow, half-raised and ready to fire in less than a second. Lila’s shadow spreads across the porch, and then she appears too, in her pretty _Frozen_ nightdress, braids mussed with sleep. Clint’s heart trips half a dozen beats because _God_ his daughter got her mother’s looks and no little girl is half as pretty as his.

But _God_ she needs to get back inside.

Swallowing, he loosens the string just enough, sits a little straighter, watches. He debates changing over for an explosive, or a smoke – smoke would be better. It would daze the Hulk, and Lila would be blinded, crying for hours because of the grit in her eyes, but it would give Clint the seconds he’d need to get in, grab her and get her out. There was plenty of milk in the fridge to rinse her eyes with, and he’d apologise profusely of course, but needs must – but keeps the arrow notched.

Lila approaches the Hulk with her usual high-chinned stride, and plops herself down on the other side of the pond. The Hulk, watching her with beady, Bruce-like eyes, slaps the water again, gentler this time, so that the resulting splash doesn’t completely drown her.

Clint can feel her smile from here, the beaming grin stretching her cheeks and making her ears red, and his breath catches when she leans. She’s fallen in the pond before now, and that water isn’t the cleanest, because he hasn’t gotten it properly sealed yet, so it’s still a bit green, but there goes her hand, splashing too.

‘Splash!’ she says, as though talking to Hulk is the most natural thing in the world.

The Hulk grins back, and goes back to splashing, still gentle to not soak his teammate’s little girl, but enough that he’s still enjoying himself.

Clint is sure he’s having a heart attack, but he loosens his grip anyway, unnotches the arrow, sets the bow down on the roof and flops back to sit there, staring in total bewilderment at the situation in front of him.

A few minutes pass, Hulk splashing away in the pond, and Lila getting up to wander around the field, and it takes Clint a moment to realise she’s plucking daisies.

‘Oh my God,’ he whispers when it hits him what she’s doing.

His seven year old daughter is making the Hulk a daisy chain flower crown at two-thirty in the morning.

‘What is my life?’ he whispers to himself, and runs shaking hands through his hair. ‘What the _hell_ is my life?’

The odd, uncomfortable, racing-pulse peace doesn’t last for long. Laura, having calmed Nathaniel down, goes to check on the older children, and when she realises that Lila is out of bed, she races down the stairs to the door. Clint is on his knee again before she’s reached the bottom step, bow back in hand with arrow notched. The Hulk stares at the door, hand in the water, head bowed to let Lila size up the flower crown. It’s almost done, and she makes short work of the last few daisies.

‘Lila,’ Laura says, and Clint bites through his lip at the shake in her voice.

Be steady, he urges silently, be steady.

She straightens her shoulders, calls their daughter again.

‘Lila,’ she says, firmer, ‘you need to go back to bed.’

The Hulk gives her a level look, and Clint hopes his resting face is enough to match it. It’s not, not by a long shot, but a man could dream. Laura, just visible from his perch, is shaking, and Clint wants nothing more than to jump down there and take over, but he’s mostly sure the Hulk would appreciate having Hawkeye appear out of nowhere in his _TMNT_ pyjamas with his bow primed.

Pretty sure that would destroy the house, and he’s not done with the dining room yet.

Lila tells her mother to wait a minute, and Clint stares at the back of her head as she knots off the daisy chain and drapes it over the Hulk’s still-bowed head. He reaches up to touch it, and smiles at her.

‘Hulk?’ Laura asks, and the smile drops from his face as his gaze snaps back to her. ‘Lila needs to go back to bed. She’ll be – she’s going to be very cranky in the morning if she doesn’t sleep now. I’ve, I’ve got to take her back inside so she can go to sleep. Is that – is that alright?’

Given that they don’t actually get to spend much time with the Hulk, Clint’s not sure how much he’s able to process the spoken word, but he takes a moment or so to consider it before nodding.

‘Okay,’ Laura says with a relieved sigh. ‘Okay. Come on, Lila, say goodnight, and we’ll get you back in bed.’

Very carefully, the Hulk straightens up, and Laura takes half a step forward, tensing up again. Clint raises the bow an inch or so more when the Hulk’s hands raise, but when his right raises to his mouth only to fall soft into the other open palm, he smiles. The open palm turns to a fist, turns, the right hand hovering over his left arm.

Laura’s shoulders lose some of the tension, and she steps back to allow Lila to repeat the gesture.

‘Goodnight,’ she says, to accompany it, and Hulk smiles at her, waves.

Laura tugs Lila by the back of her dress, and they head back inside. The Hulk turns back to the pond, and Clint’s sure he can hear laughter when he starts splashing the pond again.

Clint listens to his wife and daughter in the latter’s bedroom, and he sets his bow down for what he hopes is the final time when the light turns off. The Hulk signs goodnight again in the direction of the window when the light turns off, and then he touches the daisy chain a second time, so gentle he barely knocks the flowers.

After maybe half an hour of him sitting there, Clint reaches for his phone, only to realise that these pyjama bottoms don’t have any pockets and his phone is subsequently still on his bedside table, which is all well and good, but he wanted to ask Tony if it was safe to leave the Hulk unattended in the pond.

When the Hulk gets up to jump into said pond, he decides it’s probably best he stays to keep an eye on him. So he crawls over to the chimney and sits against it, arms folded and feet braced. There’s a theme of “I’ve done worse” going on this evening-morning, he thinks to himself, because he’s sat in worse places in worse conditions for worse reasons. Sitting in his pyjamas on the roof in pretty balmy weather to watch an eight-feet tall green monster-man play in a pond like a child is, comparatively, one of the easiest things he’s ever had to do. He wishes he had his phone to record footage for posterity.

And also for the laughs. Mostly for the laughs.

He keeps one eye on the trees, expecting whatever had been chasing the Hulk to catch up soon enough, but nothing seems to be coming.

‘You know,’ he says to himself, or maybe to the Hulk, who must surely be aware of the bird-boy sat on the roof watching him, ‘this is what my life has become. It is three in the morning, and I am on the roof watching the Hulk paddle in my pond.’

It hits him then, really genuinely hits him what he is witnessing.

‘When did this become my life?’ he asks. Demands, really, because he wants an answer. ‘More to the point; why? Why is this my life? What did I do to deserve this?’

He hopes whatever it was was worth it, because there are clouds on the horizon rolling in and he doesn’t want to sit in the rain waiting to shoot the Hulk when he gets bored of the pond and decides to smash instead.

Hours pass, the rain lasting  for barely minutes at a time, brushing over them and moving on, leaving barely a mark on the farm. There’s a couple of inches of water left in the pond, and the Hulk is tired, it seems, worn out from hours of splashing. He lies down in the pond, curling up with his hands on his head. This is usually around the time that Bruce comes back, so Clint heads back inside to get the poor bastard a towel.

* * *

_2015_

It’s almost Christmas, and Laura is nowhere near ready.

Late in the evening, after the kids have gone to bed and Clint is upstairs reading to Nathaniel, she takes some time to wrap up the last of the kids’ presents. Steve is off taking care of a minor crisis, and they all agree that he’s not pawning Bucky off on them, because he’s more than capable of looking after himself, but he likes having company, and it’s Christmas, and he doesn’t need a hundred-and-one reasons to stay with his friends and pseudo-family. He’s a Barton Stray, he’s welcome any time he wants, and so here he is.

‘Laura?’ he asks, and she smiles, recognises the tone.

‘Let me finish this one,’ she says, and refolds the paper around the box to get a better fit. ‘And then I’ll have my hands free.’

He nods, and takes a seat in the armchair to wait patiently. He’s good at waiting, she’s learnt, happy to sit still for minutes on end for her to free her arms so he can hug her. From what she can tell, she’s the only one he’ll hug; she’s never seen the kids fling themselves at him, apparently comfortable with him needing personal space, and he’s certainly never hugged Clint or the twins, all three of whom she knows would never shut up about it.

So it’s just her, and he’s not quite there on being hugged back, but they’re getting there.

‘I think,’ he says, as she puts the last of the tape on, ‘I think it’d be okay?’

He doesn’t need to explain himself. She sticks a heart over where the tape crosses over itself, and dusts her hands off, getting to her feet.

‘Alright,’ she says, smiles, ‘we’ll go at your pace.’

She’s heard enough stories about him, seen him in action, known him for months. Seeing him nervous about something as simple as a hug breaks her heart, but when he steps into her arms again, wrapping hers around him, hands open and flat against his back, resting gentle, it feels like the most natural thing in the world. Her hands press a little firmer, a little more confident, and she squeezes a little. Bucky goes totally limp in her arms, relaxed to the core, and she feels him shudder.

‘Okay?’ she asks, for audible confirmation.

He hums. ‘Yeah. I’m okay.’

She rubs his back with one hand, leaves the other still against his spine, and holds him for as long as he’ll let her. That he’s letting her hold him at all is enough; any extra time is not something she’ll take for granted.

When he’s done, when he’s had enough, he drops his hands from her back, and she squeezes one last time before letting him go.

‘That was – nice,’ he says, and his eyes flick over her face, watching her, studying. She smiles, lets him take what he needs from her expression.

‘It was,’ she agrees. ‘I like hugging you.’

‘I like hugging you too,’ he says, and bites at his lip before taking a breath and hugging her again. When she hugs back, he doesn’t protest, just squeezes that little, little bit, almost lifts her off her feet.

Later that night, as she readies for bed, Clint asks her what’s got her in such a good mood.

‘Oh you know,’ she hums, fingers weaving her hair into a messy braid, ‘the usual motherly things.’

He looks concerned for all of three seconds.

‘Bucky?’ he asks, when he talks himself out of whatever he’d been thinking.

‘Bucky,’ she agrees. ‘I’m making progress with him. I’ll have to ask Steve, but I think he’s almost back with us.’

Clint chuckles quietly before leaning over to kiss her. ‘I knew him being here would be the best thing for him.’

‘You think that about everyone.’

‘Have I been wrong yet?’ he asks, smug. ‘Of course not.’

He takes his hearing aids out, and when he’s got his back turned, she calls him a rude name.

* * *

_2011_

Clint looks like a drowned rat, traipsing mud through to Command in his search for Coulson.

‘Sir?’ he yells, and Coulson turns from a discussion with another Agent.

‘Will you go get a towel and a dry jacket and some coffee?’ the man demands, exasperated. ‘You’re going to get sick like that. At least get one of them. Please.’

Clint ruffles his hair, which does nothing but spray water everywhere.

‘Look, Clint,’ Coulson says, holds one hand up to Clint and catches an Agent with the other, taking the file he’d been carrying from him before flipping it open and scanning the contents. ‘I am too busy right now. Please go wrap up warm, hunker down somewhere, and go to sleep. Preferably somewhere where you won’t get trodden on. We’ve got men down, the 0-8-4 is causing more trouble than we thought, and I can’t get a hold of Fury.’

He glances over his shoulder, to where there is movement and bustle and Sitwell.

‘And to tell you the truth,’ he says, dragging Clint off to one side. Clint can hear him just fine. ‘I don’t trust Sitwell. But! Never mind that! Go hide in a truck or something, get out of my way. And make sure you sleep.’

‘I’m not tired,’ Clint says.

‘You have an accent again; you’re exhausted. Go to sleep, Agent Barton. Or do I need to call higher authority?’

Clint can’t stop himself from smiling.

‘No, sir,’ he says. ‘Towel, jacket, coffee. Then sleep. Want me up high?’

‘A truck will do.’

They eye each other for a second, and then Clint nods, tells him to radio if he needs him, and then disappears off back outside in search of a dry spot. It stops raining soon enough, but Clint stays tucked up into the front seat of one of the SUVs, jacket draped over his head and burner phone pressed tight to his ear. Laura woke up enough to answer him, but she’d fallen back asleep pretty quickly, and he sleeps listening to her breathe.

She’s starting snoring recently, and he’ll pick up a new mattress on the way home. With the 0-8-4 mostly under control, Coulson will send him home in the morning, and all will be well. He was only in on a favour, anyway.

He wakes up when Coulson pulls the jacket off of his head. Laura had been awake for an hour or so, but after talking to Clint and determining that he was still asleep, and not going to wake up no matter how much she talked, she’d hung up to preserve the minutes on his phone.

‘Clint?’ Coulson asks, and he blinks the grit from his eyes.

‘I feel like shit,’ he replies, and his knees crack when he straightens them out. ‘What is it? Oh, that’s a nice bit of sun, I appreciate that sunshine, get out of the way of it.’

As Clint tumbles out of the truck and to his feet, stretching himself out to try and get feeling back into his ankles, Coulson fills him in on the details of the morning’s events.

‘Honestly,’ he rounds it off with, ‘I’m surprised you didn’t wake up.’

‘I called a higher authority,’ he says, with a shrug.

Coulson understands completely.

‘I understand completely,’ he says. ‘We’ve got major clean-up to do here. The usual; clearing the site, damage control on the public, all that. We need to find the Destroyer, too, it wasn’t where he said it was, don’t suppose you could get up high and have a look? Oh, and Fury called for you, said your phone was engaged, figured it was a higher authority. He’s heading down to Roswell, for a meeting he’s holding in a couple of days. He wants you there. He asked for Nat too, but she’s still down in Culver doing observation.’

Clint had been scratching his neck, trying to get the itch of his still-damp uniform out of his skin, but stops to turn a flat stare in Coulson’s direction.

‘The Banner case?’ he asks, and Coulson nods. Clint heaves a sigh and then rolls his spine, getting several deep cracks from it before he rocks back onto his heels. ‘Alright, I’ll head on down this evening, see what he wants. Is it a Council meeting, do you know?’

‘Haven’t a clue,’ Coulson replies, and turns to head back into the polythene tunnels, ‘come on, we haven’t got all day.

It takes the better part of the day to get everything cleared up, and Clint literally trips over the Destroyer. He radios Coulson, calls him over to look at it, and they stand there staring blankly for several moments.

‘Wanna take it to Roswell with you?’ Coulson asks.

‘I hate you,’ Clint replies, rubbing at his eye. ‘This is my booked holiday time, you know. I _booked_ this time off.’

‘We’ll pay you overtime,’ Coulson assures him. ‘Make sure Fury sees this. I think it’ll – it’s a Fridge job, it’s got to be.’ He huffs. ‘I’ll call Fury, see what he wants us to do with it. Good job, Barton. Guess those clown feet of yours were good for something.’

He claps Clint on the back and heads off down the street, leaving Clint staring at the Destroyer.

After a moment, Clint whirls around and yells, ‘I’m a size ten!’ after him.

Coulson waves a hand, but doesn’t reply.

 

* * *

_2016_

Pietro has been winding Lila up, and Coop is determined to prove to Wanda that some law of space and time and words Sam is not entirely sure a nine year old should be able to pronounce when he, in his mid-thirties, couldn’t do it without the word written in front of him. Honestly, Cooper’s ability to rattle off facts and figures is something special; Sam knows for a fact that some of them are wrong, but if he didn’t know the speed of light already, he’d never have known he was wrong.

Still, Coop’s calculations of Pietro’s speed and their relevance to Lila’s annoyance cannot possibly be right. He looks at Nath, who drifted off a little while ago, and reaches out to tuck him in some more.

‘Fun, isn’t it?’

Both he and Bucky flinch, turn to look to their right, where Natasha is casually keeping pace, in nice jeans and a pretty cardigan, hair curled and Mickey Mouse ears positioned carefully. It’s such an effortless look that Sam knows she’s spent a long time considering it. She’s even eating ice cream.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Sam says, and stares straight ahead.

Natasha’s shrug bumps their elbows. ‘Looking after the Hawkbabies. It’s fun. Always something new.’

Bucky takes a step slightly to the side, putting another few inches between him and Natasha. Sam wonders what kind of sibling rivalry he’s been missing, and then decides that he doesn’t want to know, because he genuinely just considered Bucky and Natasha to be siblings. He did not sign up for this, he absolutely did not.

‘It’s stressful,’ Sam says, and Natasha offers him her ice cream. He shakes his head. She shrugs. ‘I mean, two under-tens and a baby are stressful enough, you know? And they – they like me right, Bucky?’

‘They like you,’ he assures him. ‘They’d have called Clint to come and get them if they didn’t.’

Natasha nods. ‘I know them, Sam,’ she says with that smug little smile of hers, ‘I’ve been there since the beginning with them. They like you – adore you, even. I bet Nath hasn’t cried once.’

‘He cried once,’ Pietro offers, appearing on Natasha’s other side. ‘He was hungry but he didn’t want to eat, and he was crying about it.’

‘He gets it off his dad,’ Natasha nods, sage. ‘Did he eat in the end?’

‘He was still crying, but he ate,’ Pietro says, looking proud of himself. ‘And stopped crying immediately after.’

‘He does that,’ Natasha assures him, and looks at the sleeping tot. ‘Honestly, Sam, if they weren’t happy with you, Nath would be bawling.’

Sam decides to take her word for it and they carry on down the path.

It takes the kids a few paces more to realise that Natasha’s there, and then they’re racing around to greet her with arms thrown around her middle. She laughs, genuine and sweet, and ruffles their hair, keeps her ice cream out of reach.

‘Hello, Hawks,’ she coos, and they pad along either side of her.

Sam feels oddly rejected. At least he has Nath.

They find the mascots after a while, and stop to take photos with them. Nath cries, and he cries hard, and Lila starts incoherently screaming, and Sam, rocking Nath gently and not entirely certain what’s causing all the sudden problems, doesn’t know what to say to her. Cooper is telling her to behave, and Pietro is howling with laughter.

Natasha gracefully steps in to keep the peace.

‘You’re not your dad, Ptenchik,’ Natasha laughs, and boops her nose before turning to look at the mascots. Sam, still trying to calm Nath, marvels at the genial face she’s keeping. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘babies, you know?’

The mascots know, they assure her, and Sam has to give them their due for keeping the voices even though there’s a screaming toddler.

‘Cl - Dad warned me about that,’ Sam says after Nath’s stopped crying, though he suspects it’s less him and more Pietro behind him pulling funny faces. ‘He said that because there’s so many people coming and going, Nath’s funny about faces. Something about masks?’

Natasha nods, shoves the last of her ice cream in her mouth and wipes her hands on her jeans. When she’s swallowed, she says, ‘he hates it. Babies don’t have object permanence, so he forgets who you are if he can’t see your face. He’s not forgotten Dad yet, but you should have heard the screams when Uncle Tony came to see him.’

Sam can well imagine the screams. Most of them, he thinks, were probably from Clint.

The mascots nod in understanding, and Sam takes Nath to the side so that he stays calm while the others get photos. Nat comes and joins him.

‘I don’t much want my photo taken,’ she grins, and tickles Nath’s chin before letting Sam put him back in the stroller.

‘Okay,’ Sam says after a moment. ‘Okay, I need to ask; _what_ was Lila doing?’

‘It’s something Clint does when someone shows up in costume,’ Natasha tells him. ‘Like when Tony’s in the suit, or Steve’s wearing his hood. Nath goes into overdrive, and Clint gets really stressed about his son being upset, and he just yells incoherently. It’s not even just a straight yell, it’s like he’s trying to talk but he says five words at once and it just comes out as a verbal keyboard smash.’

She laughs then.

‘Thor once said – because he showed up with his helmet, and Clint yelled at him – that Odin did that once. Yelled incoherently. It took a while for Thor to stop laughing to explain why he was laughing so hard.’

‘Was Clint impressed?’ Sam asks.

Natasha considers it for a moment, strokes her hand over Nath’s hair and calls him soft names when he finds her thumb to suck on. ‘Of course he was. Being likened to Odin is an honour. I don’t think he really knows much about Norse myth.’

Bucky slips in on the other side of Sam.

‘Sam,’ he whispers, ‘the photos are done.’

Sam jumps, and looks across at him. ‘Alright, we’ll carry on our way. You joinin’ us, Nat?’

She looks at Bucky, and then at the kids, carefully pulls her thumb free of Nath’s mouth to take Lila’s reaching hand.

‘I’ll stay a little while,’ she says, ‘just for a couple of hours. Clint just wanted me to make sure you were all still alive and in one piece. Well, seven pieces.’

Her smile is sweet, and Sam understands how she managed to do such a good job all these years.

* * *

_1997_

On the third day of Clint being away on a mission and Fury being in charge of the dog, he has to take five minutes to stand in a corner facing the wall when he realises he’s brought the dog to the office with him. Lucky is currently sat next to his desk looking very comfortable and at home, watching Fury stare at the wall.

Fury stares harder and hopes the dog goes away.

A knock at the door pulls him away from his staring, and he pretends like he was examining the bookshelf.

‘Come in.’

The door pops open, and Phil appears in the gap.

‘Sir?’ he asks, ‘I’ve got those reports you were – is that Clint’s dog?’

Lucky is on his feet and bounding to Phil as soon as the dog hears his voice, and Phil pushes the door fully open to crouch and meet him with warm hands and ready-to-scratch fingers. Fury stands there and watches Phil coo at the dog and give him what he’s sure are too many belly rubs.

‘Why didn’t Barton ask you to look after the dog?’ Fury asks.

Phil, giving Lucky’s shoulder a rub, looks up and shrugs.

‘I don’t know, sir. I thought he’d ask a higher authority.’

He gets to his feet, and Lucky almost trips him, he sticks that close to Phil’s legs. The agent shuts the door and, laughing, makes his way to the guest chairs at the desk. Fury follows, and takes his seat, with the files in hand.

‘I thought he would have, too,’ he agrees, ‘but apparently she’s busy this week. So he asked me. I think it was a last-minute request; I did spring that mission on him the morning he was due to fly out. I don’t know if he even packed.’

‘I doubt it,’ Phil replies, and Lucky rests his head in his lap. ‘You can give Clint a week to pack, and he’ll still not do it. We went on a mission to Lagos once, and he packed a box of pizza pockets, but not spare socks.’

Fury rubs under the strap for his eye patch, in a place that only aches when his Agents’ incredible inability to act like functioning human beings is brought to his attention.

‘Speaking of Barton,’ Fury says, ‘catch me up. He’s due a review – and make sure he goes to medical as soon as he’s back, I found a box of half-eaten pizza in his apartment – but I want to hear it from you first.’

‘Half-eaten?’ Phil repeats, wide-eyed. ‘Right, okay, I’ll get right on that, sir. They’ll be waiting for him in the hangar. But, he’s alright. He’s doing better; I think she’s better for him than we thought she would be. I don’t – ‘

He stops, considers his words. Fury looks at him, waits patiently.

‘I don’t think he’ll let her go. He was – he’s been talking about marrying her again. Seriously, genuinely marrying her. I don’t think he’s even thinking about it in terms of her safety, or to minimise security leaks, or anything like that. I think the only time he ever mentioned anything like that was that she’d get his pension if he died in the field.’

Fury takes the eyepatch off and rubs his face.

‘I should just kill the lot of them,’ he grumbles, and Phil laughs.

‘You like him too much for that,’ he says, good-natured as ever. ‘And you’d miss his dog.’

Lucky’s head pops up on the other side of the desk, tongue lolling and grinning like he knows for a fact Fury would miss him.

‘Amongst other things,’ the Director sniffs, and flips the file open.

(Later that day, he calls for one of the lab rats to come and see him, and demands that they do something about the dog. When asked what he meant, he waved his hand and told them that if they killed it, Barton would kill them, and he, Fury, would do nothing to stop him.)

* * *

_2016_

Laura falls asleep on her front, and Clint doesn’t realise for a few minutes, content to lie there with an arm over his eyes, listening to the world carry on without them. Somewhere down the beach, a child falls over and starts crying, and he peeks out from under his elbow to assess the situation.

When Laura doesn’t immediately tease, he glances at her, and grins. She’s a pretty sleeper, and it used to drive him mad, because he’s seen photos of himself asleep, but now he’s glad the kids got most of her looks.

‘Hey,’ he whispers, and rolls over to touch her shoulder, tracing his fingers up her neck to tickle behind her ear. ‘Don’t fall asleep, you’ll burn.’

She jerks awake, or at least, halfway so, and turns her head to look at him. Her sunglasses are lopsided, and he straightens them with a tap of a finger.

‘Put more sunscreen on then,’ she grunts, and her head flops back down against her arm.

He shuffles closer, rests his head on his arm, watches her. Eventually, a smile breaks across her face and she kicks him, half-hearted.

‘Stop staring, it’s rude.’

‘You’re gorgeous,’ he tells her, quiet, like it’s a secret, ‘I can’t help it.’

Her laughter shakes her entire body, and he feels the vibration through the beach towel they’re now half-sharing.

‘I love you,’ she tells him, ‘have I told you that recently?’

‘Mm, not for an hour or so.’

He angles for a kiss, and she happily provides, grinning against his mouth.

‘What a terrible wife,’ she teases, ‘not telling you I love you at every opportunity.’

‘Shocking,’ he teases back. ‘Come on, roll over before you burn.’

With an almighty huff, she does so, and Clint takes a moment to admire the curve of her breasts before flipping to his feet.

‘Show off,’ she hums, and slaps at his calf.

‘Old habits,’ he shrugs. ‘I’m gonna get ice cream, you’ll be alright?’

Rolling her eyes, she sits up, and points.

‘I can see the stand from here,’ she says, and Clint looks at her arm. ‘Clint.’

‘Hm?’

‘Pay attention, honey. Look at the stand, go on, there you go. See it? You can see it? So can I. You’ll be able to see me from over there. If anything happens, I’ll scream.’

He hums, nods, and crouches to kiss her again.

‘What are you?’ she laughs, pushing him away with a hand on his face. He nips at the base of her hand. ‘Twelve?’

‘Forty-five.’

‘Could have fooled me.’

He swipes his wallet from under the beach bag, and lopes off up the beach to the parlour stand at the edge of the boardwalk.

* * *

_1997_

Bernice Campbell, known as Bunny for most of her life and showing no signs of ever not introducing herself as such, has just remembered that she forgot to check her post box, and is about to go and do that when she hears a dull thud from the foyer. Someone must have fallen over, she thinks, or dropped their bag, and goes to the spyhole to check. There’s a young man, trying to press the buzzer, but he’s getting blood all over the panel, and he’s leaning hard against the wall, clutching at his side.

Bunny Campbell doesn’t know what to do.

She’s fairly certain she’s supposed to call the cops, because there is a stranger in the building, and he’s bleeding, and maybe she should call an ambulance, too.

But he’s very insistent on trying to press that button, so she finds an old rag – a dish towel that she’d used a week or so ago to mop up a leak in the sink and she doesn’t really like it anyway – and goes out to him.

‘Excuse me,’ she says, and slaps his hands out of the way. ‘Push this against the wound. Where are you trying to go?’

The young man presses his face against the wall and shoves himself upright after a minute spent panting and trying to get himself back under control. She’s seen worse injuries, and the way he’s handling it suggests he has too.

‘Laura,’ he says, ‘there’s – there’s a Laura here, right?’

Bunny doesn’t know; she’s never met a Laura, and she can barely see the names, what with the young man’s blood smeared all over them.

‘Oh God,’ he moans, and turns to press his back against the wall. Blood drips down his leg onto the floor. ‘I’ve got the wrong building, haven’t I?’

‘Don’t blaspheme,’ she chides, idle, and wipes the blood away as best she can, scanning the names. ‘Laura, Laura, Laura.’

‘She said. Said she lived upstairs. Studio apartment. Third floor? Fourth? I don’t remember which light was on.’

Bunny goes to the higher floors and scans those.

‘Laura Harcourt?’ she asks, and he crows with relief.

‘Yes,’ he nods, fervent. ‘Yeah, that’s her. Can you – can you tell her I’m here?’

‘Shouldn’t you go to the hospital?’ she asks, but presses the buzzer anyway.

‘Hello?’ comes the static sound of Laura’s voice.

The young man next to her sags in relief.

‘Laura?’ Bunny asks. ‘I live on the ground floor, there’s a gentleman here looking for you.’

‘What’s his name?’ Laura asks.

‘Tell her it’s Clint,’ the young man – Clint – says, ‘she’s not expecting me.’

‘He says he’s called Clint,’ Bunny relays.

‘I wasn’t expecting him,’ Laura says, ‘is he alright?’

Bunny looks at him, slowly sinking towards the floor.

‘I don’t think so, no. He should probably go to the hospital.’

 The pause sounds very much like Laura’s pinching her nose, or rubbing her temple. A moment or so passes, and Bunny watches Clint get his feet back under him before Laura speaks again.

‘Can you get him in the elevator? I’ll take him from there.’

Bunny nods, and then remembers that she’s on an intercom. ‘Yes, of course.’

Laura gives her thanks, and then the line disconnects.

Letting go of the buzzer, Bunny looks at Clint, and then sighs.

‘Alright, young man,’ she says, ‘let’s get you to your girl.’

‘My girl,’ Clint agrees with a sigh, looking very much like the idea is the only thing keeping him on his feet. ‘Like the sound of that.’

Bunny is a little over five-feet in height, and Clint must weigh twice what she does. It takes some doing, but she gets him to the elevator and deposits him inside. He stumbles, and grabs the railing, keeping himself upright. She leans around the door to press the button for Laura’s floor, and steps out of the elevator.

‘Don’t die on your way up,’ she teases.

‘I’ll try not to,’ Clint replies with a mock salute. ‘Thanks, Granny.’

The doors slide shut, and then the elevator rattles, taking him upstairs. Bunny looks at the mess Clint’s left behind, and then goes to find the bleach and some more rags.


	5. Everyone has a Rough Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning in this chapter for violence against clint and the resulting hospital treatment (tho on two separate occasions. the boy needs to rest and relax and not do ridiculously dangerous things)

_2005_

Bobbi is on her way to the rendezvous when the crackle of support coming to life rattles her eardrum.

‘Barton’s down, we’ve lost vitals! I repeat; Barton’s down!’

They’re going to lose her vitals if they shout down her ear again.

‘Sir?’ she asks, and takes off down the corridor, not bothering to check each room as she goes.

‘I’m on my way,’ Coulson assures her, ‘what was his last known location?’

They give them coordinates, and Bobbi can hear the rush of movement from Coulson’s end, sure he can hear it from hers too. He keeps calling for Barton on the comms, repeating his name over and over again.

‘Clint?’ she tries, on the off-chance. ‘Clint, are you there? Support!’

 ‘Still nothing,’ they say, ‘his position hasn’t changed. We’re looking at the readings now, to determine what happened.’

‘Did the feed cut?’ Coulson asks, and the hope in his voice makes Bobbi’s gut churn.

‘No,’ support replies. ‘It’s still running, but everything is unresponsive.’

Bobbi slams into the wall and rebounds, still running, kicks the next door open and takes the stairs three at a time, jumping down each flight as fast as her legs will carry her. She slams into the next door, and Coulson comes barrelling through the door at the other end of the corridor. Clint must be nearby, she thinks, he has to be.

They find him in a corridor several doors later, face-first in a pool of blood, clutching a broken arrow. His bow is several feet away, and Bobbi kicks it by accident as she rushes to him. It skitters, loud across the concrete floor, and the corridor is achingly silent.

‘Clint? Clint, can you hear me?’

His earpiece is still there, and she pops it free, checks his hearing aids. They look functional, at least. That’s something. She looks at the wound in his back; at the small, maybe punctured his kidney. Coulson is better at first aid than she is, calmer, and she rolls him over as Coulson radios for evac before his attention turns to Clint.

There’s no pulse, Bobbi can tell that much, pressing her fingers under his jaw and breathing hard when nothing thumps against them.

‘There’s no pulse,’ she tells support. ‘Support, there’s no pulse.’

‘We hear you, Agent Morse,’ support replies, and she can feel her fingers shaking.

Swallowing thick, she forces herself to calm down, to listen to what Coulson tells her to do.

‘Don’t you dare die,’ she hisses at the prone, grey body in her hands, ‘don’t you _dare_.’

‘Bobbi?’ Coulson asks, and her gaze snaps to him, ‘I need your help resuscitating him.’

‘Resuss – Right, right, okay.’

She shifts to the opposite side, kneels and rolls her shoulders. Coulson knots his fingers, places his palm over Clint’s heart. Carefully, fingers not shaking now, she wipes the blood from Clint’s mouth, rests her hands under his chin and near his nose, ready to give rescue breaths.

‘God, I hope we’re not too late.’

Coulson counts off the compressions out loud, and when he’s reached thirty, and she ducks down, pinching one hand, pulling with the other, and pushes all the air she’s got into Clint’s throat. His chest rises. That’s something.

Coulson continues counting aloud, and Bobbi mouths along, watching Clint’s face for any sign of life. Several breaths later, Coulson begins to crack.

‘You selfish bastard,’ he spits, and then, ‘thirty.’

Bobbi breathes again.

Coulson’s rhythm is faltering, compressions too hard and too fast, too slow. He’ll break Clint’s ribs. Bobbi supposes that if they can’t get a pulse, it won’t matter.

‘Clint, you bastard,’ Coulson snaps, and thumps as hard as he can. There’s a definite crack of rib. Clint doesn’t respond. ‘Don’t die on me, you ass, don’t die on me. Please, come on, come on.’

Another series of compressions, and Bobbi ducks to breathe. Clint’s chest rises, and then spasms. She rears back, fingers going straight to his chest.

‘Bobbi!’ Coulson snaps, ‘breathe!’

She nods, pinches Clint’s nose again. Another breath, another spasm.

Outside, a helicopter is fast approaching, bringing evac with it.

‘Come on, you bastard,’ she demands, presses her fingers to his jaw. ‘Phil, there’s – Phil, there’s a pulse.’

She presses her ear to his mouth, but can’t hear or feel a breath. She pulls a mirror from one of her pockets, glad she thought to bring it – if nothing else, she could check corners – and holds it to his mouth. There’s the faintest sign of breath, the faintest mist on the glass.

‘God, I’m going to kill you,’ she tells him, and tosses the mirror aside.

‘Breathing?’ Coulson asks, and she nods.

‘It’s faint, but he’s breathing.’

Coulson rocks back on his heels, and slaps at Clint’s chest again. ‘Asshole,’ he says, but he sounds fond, almost.

A moment passes, a heartbeat, and then Clint’s jerking, coming back to life – to proper life, to spitting and gasping life with trembling limbs and clutching fingers. Bobbi shoves him to one side, and he throws up, lies there shivering and choking and heaving for breath.

‘Clint?’ she asks.

Coulson goes to the door at the buzz of propellers and muffled yelling of several people.

‘Evac’s here,’ he says.

Bobbi acknowledges him with a met gaze and a nod, and then she’s turning back to Clint, hands reaching to help him upright. He grabs her wrist. His hand is shaking so badly she can see hers shaking in turn.

‘I can’t feel my legs,’ he chokes out, ‘Bob, I can’t feel my legs.’

‘It’s okay,’ she assures him. ‘You died, you dummy, you’re alright.’

Another team rushes past them, armed and ready to fight, heading back into the building the way they came, going to deal with what they had failed to do.

He squints up at her, and howls when evac lift him onto a stretcher. Bobbi looks at the pool of blood he’d left, and silently goes to collect his bow before following after the stretcher. She hands the bow to Coulson.

‘I’m going to stay,’ she says, and Phil claps her arm.

‘Find him,’ he says, and she nods, dashes off back to the doors and disappears inside.

In the chopper on the way back to base, Coulson goes and sits next to Clint on the stretcher. He’s attached to a dozen different monitors, all of them measuring his vitals – vitals that support had lost.

Clint wobbles in and out of consciousness, and Coulson holds his hand when he fumbles for it. It’s not the first time Clint’s almost died – actually died this time, selfish bastard – but something has _terrified_ him.

‘Phil?’ he slurs, and Coulson looks down at him.

‘Yeah? You alright?’

‘Not at all. Come here.’

Phil gets the feeling this is something that support won’t want to hear and pulls his earpiece out, squeezes it in his hand as he leans down to get his ear near Clint’s mouth. Clint’s earpiece has long since been taken out.

‘Laura’s pregnant,’ he breathes.

Coulson, not for the first time since getting his hands on the Barton boy, feels like he’s having a heart attack.

* * *

_2015_

Lila is the first awake; it’s the slamming door. She’s attuned, now, to the sound of the front door, because the only person that comes through the front door these days is Dad, and she knows that Dad won’t leave, not for a while yet. He promised he’d stay, at least until – how did he say? He said that because he was an Avenger, he had a lot of work to do, and he has to do that work, whether he promised to stay home or not. She’s fine with that, she really is. Saving the world is important, and he and Momma both say it, because without a world, she wouldn’t be here, or Coop. Or anyone really.

Uncle Steve wouldn’t be here. Captain America himself! He wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t a world, and Cap needs Dad’s help to save the world from the bad guys, and that’s fine by her. Maybe one day, far from now, when things are different, she’ll be able to brag about it, say that her father, he saved the world, and he did it looking like the coolest man on earth.

(Well, at least until Cap was there, because honestly, no one’s cooler than that.)

So the slamming door wakes her. It’s not really a slam, it’s more of an uncaught swing, and she lies in bed, listening. Dad says that he listens to the house, knows who’s there and who’s not without having to go and look.

She can’t hear anything.

Maybe Bucky’s stepped outside for a bit, or Uncle Tony’s come to visit and is trying to keep quiet so that he doesn’t wake everyone.

‘Don’t you walk away from me!’

She’d been dropping off to sleep again, deciding that it didn’t matter because she couldn’t hear anything, and then there’s yelling. Real, genuine yelling.

Bucky’s not happy, and she wonders who he’s yelling at.

‘Don’t tell me what to do!’ Uncle Steve yells back.

She hears everyone’s door open, and she bolts out of bed. Coop, leaning out of his door, looks at her with wide eyes. Wanda, taking the stairs two at a time, looks about ready to roll her sleeves up and go out there. Pietro is quick to follow her, barely avoiding crashing into her, and just as ready to go and pick a fight. Nath begins to cry in his room. The four of them are frozen in the hall, staring at each other and the floor and clutching their door handles and the banister, trying to decide what to do.

The shouting continues. There are rude words, and words Lila thinks sound silly. Slang, she’s sure, from another time and another place.

Momma and Dad’s door is the last to open seconds later, and Dad makes his way downstairs without a word to them gathered on the landing. Momma goes to Nath’s room to calm him down.

‘I suppose I should be grateful!’ Bucky yells, and the four of them look at each other before barrelling into Coop’s room, which offers the best view outside. ‘All this time, and you’ve not changed at all!’

He’s storming after Uncle Steve, who’s storming off to the car on the drive. Uncle Steve stops and turns back, fists clenched. They can’t really see his face from here, but there aren’t five siblings under one roof without some rivalry, and Uncle Steve looks like he’s about to swing.

‘I suppose I should be grateful that it’s twenty-fifteen and all this time and this advancement, it ain’t changed you! I should be grateful I got at least one thing I know still here! But you know what?’ Bucky demands, and gets right up in his business. ‘I’m not grateful! I’m not! Why should I be? Time moves on, and Steve Rogers stays stuck in the fucking alley like always!’

‘Language,’ Pietro whispers. Wanda slaps his arm.

Uncle Steve leans, and Lila’s seen enough fights on the TV to know that Bucky’s about to get socked in the mouth. But he doesn’t back down, and she wishes she could be that brave.

She shivers, and Momma comes in with Nath in her arms.

‘Kids,’ she says, ‘come away from the window.’

Wanda and Pietro are the first to go, disappearing upstairs, no doubt to watch from Wanda’s window, and Coop goes to sit on his bed. Lila stays at the window.

Bucky looks like he might hit Uncle Steve first, and she kind of, almost, wants him to. They’re not shouting any more, but they’re still arguing, it shows in their flailing arms and angry shoves.

‘Lila,’ Momma says, and touches her shoulder, pulls her away gently. ‘Come on now.’

‘Dad’s gonna sort it, right?’ she asks.

‘Yeah,’ Momma assures her, smoothing a hand over her hair. ‘Yeah, Dad’s gonna sort it out.’

Steve and Bucky are practically nose-to-nose, hissing at each other and Clint does not have the time or the patience to deal with it.

‘Right,’ he says by way of greeting, ‘right, you stop it. Now. The pair of you, stop it.’

They turn angry looks to him, but he straightens his shoulders.

‘What is this about?’ Clint asks, trying to be reasonable.

It’s been a long time since he had to look up while diffusing an argument, and he’s not used to it.

Bucky is an angry cat, hissing and spitting as he explains.

‘Steven,’ he snarls, ‘got a call about a minor problem. He thinks he has to go and deal with it, even though Sam said he already had it under control and was just informing Cap out of decency.’

Clint looks at him.

‘I know,’ Bucky exclaims, throwing his hands in the air. ‘I know! I told him that, too!’

‘I don’t have a choice,’ Steve interjects, fuming, ‘Sam asked for my help, and he’s trying to stop me from doing my job. I _have_ to go and do this!’

‘No!’ Bucky cries. ‘You really don’t!’

Steve bites, and then they’re squabbling again

‘Right!’ Clint yells over both of them, as fists start clenching again. ‘Inside, both of you, this is ridiculous.’

Neither of them move.

‘Inside,’ he snarls, ‘now.’

They eye him up, and then go inside. Clint follows, slamming the door behind him.

‘Laura!’ he calls, ‘down here, please!’

He ushers – shoves, really, he’s not being gentle at all – the two into the living room, and points at the couch.

‘Sit.’

They sit without complaint, and sit as far apart as they can.

‘It is three in the morning,’ Clint is saying when Laura gets to them, ‘and you are bringing this _bullshit_ into my house?’ He wheels when she enters the room. ‘How are they?’

‘Lila’s crying,’ she says, and gives the two on the couch the coldest look they have ever received. ‘I left her with Wanda, but I don’t know if you want to go up.’

He’s already making for the stairs. He glances back when he gets to the door, and the boys seem to have shrunk several inches. Laura’s hands are on her hips, and he knows she’ll have it under control until he gets back. Lila needs him more.

She’s bawling, and he wonders how he didn’t hear it.

‘I blocked it,’ Wanda whispers when he touches her shoulder. ‘I didn’t want anyone to hear. You were already so angry, and I didn’t want it to be made worse.’

Pietro is with Nathaniel at Laura’s request, keeping him entertained, and he doesn’t doubt that Lucky is sat by Coop’s bed, waiting for orders.

‘It’s already worse,’ he whispers back, and kicks his slippers off to climb into Lila’s bed with her, tugging her into his lap and settling her easily. ‘Go check on Coop, please.’

Wanda leaves without another word, and he hears Coop’s bed creak. Sure that his son will be alright, he puts everything onto his daughter instead, focuses solely on her.

Lila fits in his lap like she was made to, and doesn’t protest in the least, clings tight, sobbing into his chest. He hums, soft, harmonises with a song he know she adores. It’s not quite a lullaby, but it has the same effect, and she’s soon crying herself out.

‘Shh, sweetheart,’ he breathes, quiet, whispering it into her hair. She shudders, sniffles, wiping her snotty nose on his shirt, and he doesn’t care. It was due a wash anyway. ‘Shh, you’re alright, I’m here, I’ve got you.’

‘I don’t like them fighting,’ she whispers back. ‘He was gonna – Dad they were gonna – make ‘em stop.’

He stiffens, swallows, and then forces himself to relax. Lila is alright, he tells himself, she’s just gotten herself worked up over her idol getting into a fight with a man she’s come to know and love as if he were her biological brother. Both Steve and Bucky mean the world to her, and them fighting is not something she should have ever had to see.

‘I will,’ he promises. ‘I’ll make them stop.’

She dozes off not long after that, and he carefully scoops her and her blankets up, takes her through to Coop’s room, where they make space for her.

‘Stay with them,’ he says to Wanda, who pulls Lucky off the bed with her when Clint enters. ‘At least until we come back up.’

‘You’re going to do something awful,’ she says, looking at his face.

He clears his expression as best he can and kisses both of his children’s hair, ruffles Wanda’s, and rubs one of Lucky’s ears before going to check on Nath and Pietro. Pietro has the tot asleep against his chest, and he glances up when Clint leans through the door.

‘All under control here, Dad,’ he says, and Clint doesn’t realise, until he’s halfway down the stairs, what Pietro just called him.

He’s not sure if he was being sarcastic.

The good mood doesn’t last five seconds. Laura is giving her best lecture, and Clint doesn’t spend long listening to it. He announces his presence by slamming the door shut, and Bucky flinches. Steve looks petulant, a child being scolded, but resisting apologising.

Laura pauses her tirade long enough to look at him.

‘I was just explaining that they can’t have a screaming fit in the middle of the night,’ she says.

‘No,’ he agrees with a resolute shake of his head. ‘No, they absolutely can’t.’

She turns back to chew them out some more, but Clint touches her arm, shakes his head once. She steps back without a word, lets him have the floor.

He doesn’t have much to say, knows she’ll have said it all, and in much better words than he’d ever manage. They know he’s furious, because both of them shrink away from his gaze, refuse to meet it. Bucky stares at his hands, Steve at the wall.

‘You upset my kids,’ Clint tells them, in the calmest voice he thinks he’s ever used. ‘Made my little girl cry. She’s been bawling her heart out, because her idol and her big brother have just gone at each other like cat and dog, and I won’t have it.’

Steve opens his mouth, but catches Laura’s eye, and his jaw snaps shut.

‘I want you out of my house,’ Clint says.

Laura doesn’t protest. There’s a flatness to her expression that has them going to their bags in silence.

Steve normally kisses Laura’s cheek when he leaves, but she refuses to allow it, and Bucky doesn’t even try to hug her goodbye. Tails between their legs, they head to the car and climb in.

When the sound of the engine has gone, and the farm has been plunged back into silence befitting three in the morning, Laura sags, and Clint rubs her back.

‘I never want to do that again,’ she says, ‘I don’t want Bucky to go back to how he was.’

‘He won’t,’ Clint assures her, and he looks so old, older than mid-forties, older than time. He runs a hand through his hair, sighs. ‘He’ll be alright. Steve will be in a mood for a few days. They’ll come crawling back soon enough, apologising and promising to be best friends forever. They’re brothers, it’s how brothers are. Look at Coop and Pietro.’

‘Did you have to ban them?’

‘They made Lila cry,’ he says, though he doesn’t look pleased about having to make this kind of decision. ‘I – I opened the house to them, as a safe place, somewhere quiet and out of the way where they can recuperate and not worry about the outside world. I won’t have them bringing the outside world in at three in the morning to the detriment of my daughter.’

Laura sighs, turns to lean against him, and he drops a kiss into her hair.

‘I don’t like it,’ she sighs, and Clint assures her that he doesn’t either.

* * *

_2016_

Bruce looks rough. Bruce always looks rough, but this is a special kind of rough that Clint feels in his very soul.

‘She does that to you,’ he grins, and shakes the towel out.

Bruce, sitting in the pond and looking very dazed still, eventually pieces together visual and audio and memory, and draws his knees up to his chest. It’s too late to salvage his dignity, but having kids has taught Clint that life is not a PG-13 movie far more effectively than S.H.I.E.L.D. did.

‘Who?’ Bruce croaks. ‘What? Where – the farm?’

‘The farm,’ Clint nods, and shakes the towel again. ‘Get out of the pond, it can’t be comfortable.’

Bruce looks at the towel, and then at the pond with its three inches of water, and then up at Clint, who grins down at him.

‘What happened? Did – the other guy – he didn’t?’

‘He splashed about in the pond for a couple of hours,’ Clint shrugs, and drops the towel onto Bruce’s head, bending over to roll his pyjama legs up before getting in the pond to help haul Bruce to his feet. ‘Didn’t do any harm. Lila came to see him.’

Bruce, in an attempt to straighten himself up and pull out of Clint’s hands, and get out of the pond and probably just flinch, almost pulls them both over when he slips in the mud. Clint, laughing his ass off, manages to get Bruce up over the pond, though he almost loses his balance when Bruce doesn’t pick his knees up and staggers.

‘Lila?’ Bruce asks, frog-thick and with wild, panicked eyes.

‘My little girl,’ Clint reminds him, ‘she’s fine. She made you a flower crown. Well, she made _you_ a necklace. It was a crown for the big guy.’

Bruce looks down to find the string of daisies around his neck. Clint tells him that the Hulk seemed to really appreciate the sentiment, because he’d kept touching it and smiling. Looking a little less panicked but a lot more bothered, Bruce grabs a couple of handfuls of his hair. Clint tucks the towel around the scientist’s waist and then takes his wrists, pulls his hands away with fingers pressed against his pulse points.

‘Stop that,’ he says, firm. Bruce looks at him. ‘Look at me. You’re fine. She’s fine. The big guy didn’t do _anything_ except paddle around and then leave you in the pond. Nothing followed him here. You’re safe. Nat’s out east somewhere, so you don’t have to talk to her. You can get food and clothes and a shower and go if you want, and I won’t argue it. Stop looking at me like I’ve got two heads.’

‘Clint, I.’

Clint waits, but doesn’t let go of Bruce’s wrists.

‘I – I shouldn’t have come. I didn’t know he knew the way. I didn’t know I knew the way – you’re _sure_ everything’s alright?’

‘I’m a shit liar, Doc,’ Clint tells him, and loosens his grip, letting go when he’s sure Bruce won’t grab his hair again. ‘Pathologically awful at it. Do you really think I’d be stood here telling you everything was alright if it wasn’t? If my _daughter_ was injured?’

‘No,’ Bruce agrees with a heavy sigh. ‘No, no, I suppose not. So – uh – she wasn’t frightened?’

‘Not really. She was a bit nervous, but I think that was more because she’d not met him before and as far as she knew neither me nor Laura were there to buffer it. I mean, I was on the roof, but she didn’t know that.’

Bruce glances up at him.

‘You were on the roof?’

‘All night. Had to make sure you were alright, you know?’

Clint manages to get Bruce moving in the direction of the house, and the scientist walks alongside him, not protesting the hand on his arm, apparently considering what Clint’s told him.

‘He just sat playing in the pond?’ he asks, and Clint backs up the stairs to help Bruce up them. ‘I’m not a total invalid, Clint, I can climb stairs.’

‘Oh, hush. And yes. He just played in the pond. When Laura told him Lila had to go back to bed – and don’t give me that look again, I didn’t want to freak the Hulk out by jumping off the roof – he said goodnight.’

‘Said?’ Bruce echoes.

‘Sorry, he signed it. ASL.’

Clint demonstrates, and Bruce’s thinking face sweeps over his features. Eyebrows drawn, he lets Clint lead him inside and up to the family bathroom. With the twins now in the guest rooms, he explains, the en-suite he used last time is kind of off-limits.

‘I mean, if you want to go into Wanda’s room, you’re welcome to, but she might protest.’

It takes Bruce a moment to visibly connect Wanda’s name to a face, but when he’s got it, he shudders.

‘No,’ he says with a shake of his head, ‘no it’ll be alright. I’m fine in the family bathroom.’

With a decisive nod, Clint gestures him inside and then shuts the door. Bruce hears him whistling as he goes down the corridor and then what he presumes is the master bedroom door shuts, leaving Bruce all the time in the world to clean off pond-mud and the sticky, sweaty feeling that always accompanies the comedown from the big guy.

Clint, meanwhile, is face-first in his bed, laughing as silently as he can. Laura tells him he sounds like a dying goat. He finds a pillow and throws it at her. After a minute or so, he hauls up and goes to the bathroom to shower himself, before Bruce uses all the hot water again.

He takes the scientist a pair of jogging bottoms and a shirt, knows they’ll fit him because Clint’s a few inches bigger, and leads him back downstairs.

‘It’s early,’ Clint offers, checks his phone. ‘Just gone six. No one will be up for another couple of hours if you wanted a cat nap. I recommend the chair rather than the couch, if I’m honest.’

Bruce looks very small in Clint’s clothes, looks small and meek and terrified.

‘Bruce,’ Clint says, quiet, soft. ‘Look at me. You’re alright. Nothing here will hurt you. You know that, right?’

For a second, the still-dawning sun catches Bruce’s eyes and they shine green. But then it goes behind a cloud, and they’re the same chocolate brown that Nat whispers about when she’s ten drinks deep and forgets that Clint’s there.

‘I can – this sounds stupid. But I can smell her here. Nat, I mean. Her perfume.’

Clint sniffs, but all he can smell is his shower gel and the air purifier.

‘Probably just you, kiddo,’ he says, ‘seriously, get a couple hours rest, I’ll make sure no one comes down till eight.’

* * *

_2006_

Nothing, Clint thinks, nothing will ever beat the feeling of coming home. Not coming home to an apartment with a faulty shower, or with no food, a place where he lives and eats and sleeps, but an actual, a real _home_.

A place where his wife is, his dog. His son. He hasn’t seen Cooper since he was only weeks out of the hospital, barely able to open his eyes and even less able to grasp at his finger.

Four months, he thinks, almost five. That’s a long time to be away from home.

As he rounds the corner, he looks up, smiles. There’s a light on in the apartment; the bathroom, he thinks, and glances down to check his watch. It’s late. Laura will probably be having a bath. The smile spreads a little wider; four months is a long time to be away from the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen, and even longer to be away from said beautiful woman naked.

He still remembers where all of her freckles are, had traced them in the stars on long, silent nights spent alone on a rooftop waiting for a target that would never come like he was tracing the curve of her spine, her hip, the crease of her thigh, using Sagittarius as the stretch and bend of the bow inked in black on the soft skin of her hip, in just the right place to rest in his palm. Sighing, shaking the thought away, he hikes his duffel bag higher and carries on down the street. It’s quieter than he remembers, and he feels, not for the first time, like a stranger to his own home.

He certainly looks a stranger; he’s been away from home for a long time, living a life he had not wanted to live again, and the scruff on his jaw has become a full beard now, an inch long if not longer, and he’s lost weight again. Laura, he thinks, will be mad at him for half a dozen things.

Another glance up; the bathroom light is off, and Laura’s shadow passes by the curtain in the – that’s the lounge, he thinks. Maybe she’s wearing one of his shirts, the way she always does. A few of his button-downs, the S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue Henleys he has for undershirts but never wears, are among her favourites to steal. That and that one purple check shirt. He misses that shirt.

He smiles, and shoves a hand into his pocket, rifles for his keys. His pack is aching across the torn muscle in his shoulder, bow and quiver heavy on his back. He wishes he’d been home half an hour ago, so that he could have joined her in the bath.

A quick twist of a key, and he’s through the gate, striding up the path. His parka is tattered now, battered by bad weather and knives and the odd stray bullet. Thank God they were mostly grazing wounds; Laura will be mad about it regardless. She’s always mad about his injuries.

(How can he look after her, after their son, she always says, how can he give her everything that he promised her, if he’s dead in a gutter somewhere in some forgotten European backwater? How can he love her for the rest of their lives if he’s losing his hours from now?

He’d make some quip about how he’d keep his end of the promise, at least, and she’d slap him, because that’s a cruel thing to say, that’s horrible, and what had S.H.I.E.L.D. done to the man she first fell in love with?)

Through the door into the building, and he pauses to check the mail. Nothing. Good. There shouldn’t be anything. It’s under a false name, for a false family, and why does a false family need magazine subscriptions and company offers? He debates the elevator, looks at the stairs, weighs the pros and cons.

His shoulder twinges. Elevator it is. At least he’s not bleeding this time. At least, he doesn’t think he is. As he waits for the elevator, he remembers that he should call Bunny, make sure she’s alright, make plans to visit her. He hasn’t seen her for over sixteen weeks. That’s a long time. Maybe Laura found time. He doubts it; babies are hard work.

Part of him wants nothing more than one of the beers in the bottom of the fridge; beer, a shower, food, sleep. But drinking as soon as he was through the door is one of few memories he has of his dad. He can’t do that to Cooper.

He catches sight of his reflection in the elevator mirror as he rides up to their floor; he’s not fit to present himself to Laura, never mind to Cooper. Some days, he looks so like his mother he can almost hear her humming lullabies behind his ears, in some long-forgotten place where his hearing was intact and not reliant on overpriced bits of silicone.

Then there are days where he’s scruffy and bruised and exhausted, where he looks his age and he’s caked in blood no scrubbing will ever wash it off until Laura takes the brush from his hands and presses a cool washcloth to the raw skin in its place, warming beneath the gentle weight of her hand, and God, some days he’s so like his father. So like the once-breathing wreckage of a human being who had somehow brought him and Barney up to double figures before fucking it up.

His knuckles crack the mirror when they connect, splintering his face into a hundred pieces. Seven years bad luck. Add it to the rest, he thinks bitterly, and kicks at the shards that fall.

The elevator pings open, and he hikes his bags up onto his shoulders. At the other end of the corridor, one of their neighbours catches sight of him. Clint raises his chin, then his hand, waves. The neighbour looks at him in concern. _Oh!_ Clint can see it on his face. _Oh, that’s the new dad from 616. I thought he’d left them. He’s been gone for months! Finally crawled back after a bender. Disgraceful._

Clint shivers. Cracks his neck. Pops his back. Finds the apartment key.

Laura still doesn’t deadbolt the door. If he’s told her once, he’s told her a thousand times.

‘Honey?’ he calls, quiet, in case Cooper is asleep. ‘I’m home!’

Something drops in the kitchen; a mug, Clint thinks, recognises the low ting of it hitting the tile. He hates that tile. He hopes it wasn’t his mug, he likes that mug. It was absolutely awful and cheesy and ridiculous and he loved it, because it was one Laura had bought for him to keep at her apartment way back when, and it had somehow survived the years. Sure, it had chips and the inside was scratched with a decade’s worth of spoons, but it was a good mug. Far more faithful to him than many things.

(He’d never dropped that mug, and he thinks that says all that needs to be said.)

There’s a moment of horrible, tense silence, and then a whispered, ‘Clint?’

Laura appears alongside her voice a second later, and she looks – she looks –

‘You look great,’ Clint says, and drops the bags to the floor, easing them from his fingers so that they don’t clatter and bang.

She looks awful, but motherhood suits her. He catalogues the extra few pounds she hasn’t shifted – she’s been exercising, he can tell, and it’s on his tongue to tell her to slow down, to be careful, don’t hurt yourself – the nicks in her legs where she’d shaved, pinpricks of blood clotted against her calves and the curve of her knee, and he can just about see the edge of her bow, the arrowhead pointing down to the floor. Her hair’s still up in its messy bun, falling slightly to one side and looping low against the curve of her skull. She’s got dark circles to rival his, pale and with a few spots still on her chin. She’d had acne bad during her first trimester, he remembers, vaguely recalls her mentioning stress. Single motherhood is stressful.

She’s wearing his shirt, one of the S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue Henleys, logo on the chest, all the buttons undone; she said she was going to breast-feed, when she could. He appreciates the view, and has to drag his eyes up. It’s an effort.

A flush creeps up her cheeks, down her neck, turns her rosy and his heart catches behind his teeth.

‘Really,’ he says, offers her a crooked, soft smile. ‘Really, you look great.’

‘You look like _shit_ ,’ she replies, and swallows thickly. She looks like she’s trying to hold too many words back. It’s never worked before, and he’s not surprised that it doesn’t work now. ‘Four months, Clint, with _no word_. I thought you were _dead_. I thought you were dead and never gonna come home and see your son again and you walk through that door without so much as a by-your-leave and you have the _audacity_ to look like absolute shit and yet somehow be hotter than you were when you left? How _dare_ you?’

She tears her eyes away, yanks the band from her hair to rake her hands through it. She paces once, twice, turns a full circle in a couple of steps and then marches over to jab him in the chest. She’s given herself a manicure, he thinks, short, cute baby pink tips on gently-curved nails. Her hands look soft.

‘I don’t know whether to slap you or kiss you,’ she spits, and yanks him down by his over-grown hair. Against his mouth, she whispers a few choice words that make him grin.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers back, fingers finding her hips and pulling her close. His gear is in the way, but she’s close enough that he can hear her heart pounding against her ribs. ‘I didn’t mean to be gone so long. It was supposed to be a quick in-and-out.’

‘Story of your life,’ she says, and the salt on her tongue makes her voice crack. Her eyes are wet, red and she’s cried too much, he knows. She doesn’t have anything left for him.

‘Story of my life,’ he agrees, and she lets go of his hair to clutch at the filthy, torn parka, burying her face in it and sobbing.

He rubs her back, coos soft, and buries his face in her hair, breathes in the cotton and camomile smell of her shampoo.

‘Your beard is stupid,’ she grumbles into his chest, and he laughs.

‘I lost my razor,’ he admits. ‘Sorry.’

‘Get that coat off,’ she says, peeling away and sweeping her fingers under her eyes, ‘I’ll – when was the last time you ate? And don’t give me some story about them feeding you, because they never do.’

He shrugs out of his coat, feels some tension ease from his shoulders, and smiles as she backs up to turn and head back to the kitchen. ‘Must have been a couple of days. I stopped off at wherever it was. Empty calories, I think. Didn’t do shit.’

‘Typical,’ Laura snorts, and disappears behind the partition.

Clint hangs his coat up and braces himself against the wall to ease his boots off, turning back, briefly, to slip the deadbolt into place. Once he’s got his gear stowed away in the corner of the hall by the door, quiver hung up next to that ratty coat, he goes through to the bathroom, rinses his face and washes his hands, makes himself as presentable as he can be. He searches his eyes, watching for flickering shadows, but all he sees is exhaustion, all he sees is _him_.

Nothing of Harold. Just him, just Clint.

Sighing, giving his face one last rub with the flat of his hand, he turns to leave, only for noise to break over the baby monitor.

‘Coop,’ he breathes, and Laura is halfway across the room when he leaves the bathroom.

‘I’ll get him,’ he tells her.

A frown flickers across her face, but she nods, tells him to be gentle, and he scoffs at her.

‘I’m always careful with my boy,’ he tells her, because he’d been good for that, in the few weeks he’d had with him. He’d not made a mistake.

His first mistake is not realising that Cooper Barton has no idea who he is.

‘Hey, buddy,’ he coos, and the teary noises coming from his son stop for a second.

They eye each other. Clint smiles, because Cooper has his momma’s eyes, but his nose (poor kid, he thinks) and reaches into the cot to pick him up.

The screaming is immediate, and Cooper kicks and wriggles and sobs his little heart out. Clint’s hands draw back a few inches in panic, but Cooper looks fine – smells fine – and he doesn’t sound fine, but his lungs are clearly working just right. He scoops the boy up, because he’d done nights that first week or so, had been the one to calm him down when he worked himself up. It’s been months, but he remembers how to hold him, keep him supported against him. It’s easy, natural.

Cooper doesn’t stop screaming.

Laura is at the door watching them as Clint does all he can to calm their son, but when a minute passes with no improvement, she steps in, fingers slipping under Cooper’s arms to peel him away from his dad and into his momma’s embrace. He calms almost immediately, soothed, it seems, by a familiar embrace.

‘Ha,’ Clint breathes, ‘didn’t see that coming.’

Laura smoothes a hand over Cooper’s hair, ducks her head to kiss his crown, hushes him with a gentle bounce of her arm.

When he’s calmed, clutching at her (Clint’s) shirt, she lifts his chin with a finger, points at Clint, who offers her, and then Coop, a crooked smile.

‘That’s your daddy,’ she says, tugs the shoulder of his onesie straight, ‘he’s your daddy.’

Cooper looks at him, and Clint looks back, smiles. Unimpressed, highly bothered, teary-eyed, Cooper buries his face in Laura’s chest, hiding away from him.

‘Don’t force him,’ he says, and Laura hates the look on his face. She hasn’t seen it for _years_ , and she can feel her heart aching. ‘He’s not happy. I’ll – I’ll step back, okay? You – you do what you – you get him calm again. I’ll just – I’ll be – ‘

He gestures, vaguely, towards the door.

‘Clint,’ Laura starts, but he shakes his head.

‘No, no, he’s not happy, he doesn’t – he doesn’t recognise me. Doesn’t know me, and why would he? I haven’t been here for months. I’ll just – I’ll wait out there.’

He slips past them and she waits to hear the front door slam. She knows him better, honestly, she knows him too well to even begin to suspect that he’d leave, but part of her worries. The springs of the couch creak, and then there’s silence. Clint will be brooding, she knows, glaring at the wall in silence and building up a dozen arguments against himself, and she looks at Cooper, who blinks back at her with her dark eyes.

‘You’re trouble, you know that?’ she asks, fond.

Coop blinks at her some more, and then settles back against her.

It doesn’t take long to put him down to sleep, and as she’s tucking him back into the cot, she hears the couch creak again. She waits, and waits, but nothing comes. No broken glasses, no slammed fridge door, no anything. Maybe he’s pacing, glaring out of the window. Maybe he just lay down. She smoothes a hand over Coop’s hair and heads to the living space. Clint’s standing by the window, a long line of self-loathing and unwashed clothes. He’s barely recognisable like this, and she stands there for a moment before approaching.

‘Honey?’

His jaw juts, lip curling, and then he sighs, shakes his head.

‘I don’t know what I expected,’ he says with a derisive huff. ‘I mean, come on, I’ve been gone most of his life. It’s – it’s not like he’s going to remember that kind of thing, is it? About the only thing he remembers is survival instinct.’

‘Not true,’ she argues, gentle, hand lifting to rest on his arm.

Not for the first time, but for the first time in a long time, he shrugs her off.

‘True. I’m an idiot, you know that as well as I do. I should have – I shouldn’t have been gone so long. Maybe I shouldn’t have come home, I don’t know, it’s – it’s not fair on him.’

‘Right, that’s enough,’ she says, grabs his wrist, and digs her nails in when he tries to pull away. ‘Come with me.’

He stares at her, but she begins dragging him back towards the nursery. Even though he could stop her by planting his feet, he follows along, and only stops when they get to the doorway.

‘Laura, no,’ he says, and she yanks as hard as she can.

‘Chair,’ she says, points at it. It’s a rocking chair, one he bought when he got home from that mission in Siena, especially for her and the nursery. He looks at her. ‘Sit. Now. You’re not a dog, Clint.’

He eyes her, but she’s got her mouth in a hard line, and he swallows, goes to sit in the chair. Laura shuts the door, and goes to the cot.

‘See?’ she hums, quiet, strokes the back of her fingers down Coop’s cheek. ‘It’s not so scary, is it?’

Clint isn’t sure who she’s talking to, but he sits there all night watching Coop sleep through the bars of his cot. Laura stays with him, talking quietly to both of her boys, and in the morning, when Coop wakes, he doesn’t immediately cry. Laura counts those quiet five minutes as a victory. Clint is not so convinced, but obligingly ducks out of the room to let Laura feed and change their son in peace.

* * *

_1997_

There is something sickeningly beautiful about watching Clint open his eyes. Laura has been sat in this uncomfortable chair for so long one of her feet, her ass, both of her elbows and probably her entire spine have all gone completely numb. She’s sat in every possible position, and if it was remotely viable, she’d have sat on the floor instead, because the cold tile must be more comfortable than this plastic monstrosity.

But eventually even exhaustion has to win out, and she starts dozing, shifting every now and then to relieve pressure on her bones.

‘Good lucky trying to get comfortable in those torture-machines,’ Clint slurs from the bed, and Laura just about has a heart attack.

His eyes are half-open, bloodshot and bruised to high hell, and they shut every few seconds. God, he looks awful, but seeing him awake is – is –

It’s a relief.

‘If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have to,’ she bites back, and he tries to laugh, but coughs, and then whines pitifully.

His monitors bleep and bloop and the visuals display things she doesn’t understand before settling.

‘Clint?’ she asks, shoves up onto sore, sleepy feet and crosses to sit on the edge of the bed.

He’s propped up, tubes up his nose, tubes and wires and cables attached to him at chest and elbow and finger. She’s pretty sure that’s a colostomy bag too, but she’s not sure. He’s pale and he sounds like he’s been through the wringer, gravel and tar and his accent is thicker than ever, a surer sign of his pain than any of the equipment or injuries.

After a moment of watching her through heavy-lidded eyes, he smiles. It’s a sad sort of smile, apologetic. A kicked puppy offering consolation for being in the way of your foot. Not for the first time in her life, Laura is not sure she can survive the heartbreak.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers, coughs and splutters pathetically around the tubes going down his throat, barely able to get the words out at all. ‘I – ‘

‘Shh,’ she breathes, smoothes a hand over what remains of his hair; they’ve shaved his head again and she wishes they’d stop doing that.

It’s the first time she’s come to see him in the hospital; he doesn’t normally tell her that he’s been in at all, refusing to admit that he’s had any kind of surgery or medical care beyond a few stitches or a reset bone. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for Phil calling her in, she wouldn’t be here at all, and she thinks, from now on, she’s going to come in any time he’s due home from a mission. Twenty-four is not nearly old enough to be dealing with her idiot secret agent boyfriend, but here she is, stroking his hair to give him something other than the god-knows-what that’s wrong with him.

His face screws up, his shoulders push back against the pillows and he tries to rearrange himself, get himself more comfortable. Less than an inch to the side, and he gives up, breathes hard, whines.

‘Shh,’ Laura breathes again, carefully cups his face, avoids the tape and tubes hooked behind his ears, leans in to press her mouth to his creased brow. ‘Shh, you’re alright, honey, you’re alright.’

‘I fucked up,’ he breathes, breath hot against her neck. ‘Real bad.’

‘You did,’ she nods, presses their foreheads together, watches him struggling to keep his eyes open. ‘You fucked up real bad. But it’s alright, _you’re_ alright.’

His eyes shut, and he sinks a little, relaxes. His breathing evens out, and she glances up at the monitors by the bed; they’re telling her that he’s fine, that his brain patterns are normal, even. From the looks of it, he’s just fallen asleep. It’s probably better for him, and she’s glad; at least he’s resting. She waits a little, to be sure, and then presses a gentle, butterfly-soft kiss to his mouth before getting to her feet and going to look at the charts and monitors and trying to make sense of what she’s seeing.

There isn’t a list of his injuries, and she doesn’t know if that’s good or bad.

She glances over at him, and feels a smile tugging at her mouth; even though he’s asleep, probably closer to unconsciousness, he’s turning towards her, probably listening to her and judging her in that misty, sleepy way of his, making sure she’s safe even though he can barely breathe without hurting himself. For a minute or two, she watches him rest, and then steps back and rounds the bed. A moment passes, and then his head turns, and she laughs. It’s not a very nice laugh, stressed and scared and worried to her very core, but she loves him so much, _so_ _very much_.

‘You’re a disaster,’ she tells him, and pulls the chair closer to the bed, takes his hand in hers, and settles in to wait for him to wake again.

A nurse comes in maybe half an hour later, asks if she wants to go to the canteen, get some food, a coffee, hell, even just go for a bathroom break.

Laura is torn, and the nurse laughs.

‘You’ll be no good to him if you’re in a bed too,’ she says, and holds the door. ‘Go get some food and take a walk around the ward, and come back in. He won’t have gone anywhere.’

She supposes not, and kisses his temple, tells him she loves him, and heads to the canteen. Phil has obviously been alerted to the fact Barton’s girlfriend is on the walkabout, and meets her in the corridor outside the medbay.

‘How is he?’ he asks, falling into step beside her. He looks stressed and tired, and Laura is sure that he’s kicking himself.

‘Awful,’ she says, shakes her hair out before pulling it up away from her face. ‘He’s got those tubes up his nose again. He was awake and talking, though. Still him.’

Phil nods, unbuttons his jacket to put his hands in his trouser pockets, and matches her stride. ‘That’s something.’

They walk in silence for a few corridors, and then he asks, ‘how are you?’

She laughs. ‘I’ve been better, to be honest. A lot better. God, I don’t think I’ve ever felt worse.’

‘He does that,’ Phil nods. ‘But you’re – you’ll be alright. He’s set to make a full recovery like always.’

‘Is it always like this?’ she asks, quiet, and Phil glances at her before pulling her hand into the crook of his elbow, resting his other hand atop hers, offering her a smile.

‘Not always,’ he says, ‘he’s – he’s gotten better, you know? About his limits, about what he can safely do. He doesn’t usually need surgery these days. At least not major surgery like this.’

It doesn’t do much to comfort her, but she appreciates the sentiment. Phil leads her down to the canteen, and they sit eating reheated pasta and drinking cheap coffee.

Laura gets back to Clint’s room after an hour or so, and finds him awake and patting at his face, scowling.

‘No, honey,’ she says, rushing over to get his hands away from his face, ‘leave it alone, you need those in.’

He grumbles to himself, turns his face away, but his fingers turn and curl, try to fit into hers but fail by some inches.

‘Sweetheart,’ she coos, settles on the bed next to him, head tilting to watch him.

Maybe her hair smells as it slips over her shoulder, maybe the movement catches his eye, but he looks back and blinks blearily up at her.

‘Oh,’ he says, smile stretching across his face. ‘Hello, honey. Thought you were – was dreamin’.’

Laura bites the inside of her cheeks. ‘How much morphine have you had?’

He screws his face up, mouth twisting to display in the most basic term that he hasn’t got the faintest clue.

‘Is bright,’ he grunts, and slaps a hand over his eyes. Laura reclaims his hand, laces their fingers properly, ‘angel.’

She laughs, and assures him that she is absolutely not an angel.

‘I’m just a girl,’ she reminds him, and he shakes his head, tries to tug his hand free.

‘Naw,’ he slurs, screwing his eyes up again, ‘naw, you’re – you’re my girl? Right?’

‘Right.’

The smile returns, and he’s content to rest for a little longer. She stays with him, watching his monitors for any sign of change; other than a mild spike in heart rate, he’s the same as ever. Silence reigns for several minutes, and Laura smiles at her sleeping boyfriend, squeezing his hands any time he squeezes hers. Eventually, he stirs again, and she lets his hands go when they flex.

‘Leave your tubes alone,’ she tells him, ‘you need them.’

He makes a pathetic noise, but obligingly leaves his hands on his chest.

‘What they for?’ he asks, and Laura glances up at the monitors.

‘You had surgery, sweetheart,’ she reminds him, ‘you fucked up real bad, remember?’

‘Mm, ran into a trap.’

Well, she could have lived her life not knowing what ridiculous thing he did this time.

‘These things happen,’ she assures him, runs a hand over his hair, ‘you’re alright now.’

He nods, bleary and jerky, and blinks up at her.

‘I missed you,’ he says, quiet, caught behind his teeth. ‘Wanted to – to come home.’

‘You can come home soon,’ she assures him, ‘as soon as they say you can go, I’m bringing you home with me, and I’ll look after you.’

Even with the coat of morphine addling his facial muscles, she recognises that leer.

‘You’ll be so lucky,’ she teases, and leans down to kiss him before he tries to arch up and do it himself. He shivers, and grins against her mouth. ‘You need to rest.’

‘Mm, can manage something,’ he whispers, absolutely sure of himself. 

She kisses his nose before pulling upright again, and feels her heart warm when he tries to chase.

‘When you’ve got the stitches out,’ she tells him, ‘and not a moment before.’

He looks like he’s going to try and bargain with her, but thinks better of it and huffs instead. It reminds her, rather strikingly, of Lucky. Who did it first, she wonders, idle, playing with the shell of his ear, because that drives him insane, and he needs a distraction.

‘Stop it,’ he whines, bats uselessly at her hands.

She gives his ear one last gentle tug before letting go.

‘My handsome man,’ she coos, running the back of her fingers over his cheek. ‘Get some sleep.’

‘Stay?’

She nods. ‘I will,’ she promises, ‘no one can make me leave.’


	6. Mommahawk

_2015_

The first night Pietro comes home, Laura knows that Clint stays awake in readiness. He’d died, Clint had said, explaining, late in the evening after the kids were in bed and Wanda had retreated to the guest bedroom that was now irrevocably hers (soon to be decorated, once Nathaniel was with them and safe), that Pietro had died to save him, taking three dozen bullets through the back to save him and some civilian kid he’d had to go back and save. He’d been kicking himself over it, but Laura knows that Clint knows better. He’d known Pietro better, of course, because she’d never met the boy, and had believed she never would. Then a little over a week later, Clint brought him home without the slightest hesitation and it _is_ home, Laura thinks to herself.

She took one look at that the frail-seeming, pale, shivering boy in the wheelchair, stubble or no stubble, runner’s muscles or not, and she knew she’d never let him go. He needed to stay. Both of them did. Strays, Clint had joked, just like Nat. Look at how Nat had turned out, she’d joked back, and Clint had just smiled that proud smile of his, off into the middle distance like he had the right to take all the credit for all that Nat had become.

So Pietro had been as undeniable an addition to the house as his sister, but Laura wasn’t sure how to – not how to treat him, but she – Pietro’s mental state, his everything, it was different. Approaching him was different. Clint had been wheelchair-bound before now and sure, they’d been a trying few weeks, because he was the most irresponsible man she’d ever met, but Pietro wasn’t an invalid in any way, shape or form. Clint hadn’t really been crippled either, but at least he didn’t almost take his eye out by accident when he’d meant to just lift his hand.

The physical aspect of Pietro being in the house isn’t an issue, because Laura’s had two children and is just under a month from the third, and with Clint too, there’s nothing she hasn’t seen or had to clean up, but the mental? Clint’s never been dead, to her knowledge, never been on the other side. That must be hard.

When she woke that first morning to find Clint still in bed beside her with no indicator that he’d left at all, she’d asked him if everything was alright.

‘They’ll come,’ he’d replied, and settled down next to her, ‘they’ll come.’

She didn’t need to ask what he meant; nightmares were not an unusual thing in this house.

The nightmares come on the fourth night, and Pietro screams the house down. Laura is not as fast on her feet as she once was, but that, she supposes, is what happens when you let Clint near you. Said husband, meanwhile, is up and out of the door in two seconds flat, leaving Laura to ease herself upright and out of bed at her own pace. By the time she gets to the bedroom door, Wanda is there, rushing back and forth getting Clint whatever he needs to look after her brother, and Laura’s comforted to see that Wanda’s not fighting him on anything he’s saying; he’s been at this longer, knows what he’s doing.

Laura eases herself downstairs, and Nathaniel kicks, as grumpy as his dad.

‘I know, sweetheart,’ she coos, giving him a familiar rub as she pads to the kitchen to get the milk pan out. ‘I know. He’s a nuisance, your dad. I’ll let you pee on him all you like.’

Wanda appears out of nowhere just as Laura is spooning cocoa powder into the milk pan, where milk is starting to boil, and she doesn’t even flinch.

‘Hello, sweetheart,’ she hums, ‘I’m almost done on this.’

Wanda hovers over her shoulder, peering into the pan in interest. ‘Cocoa?’ she asks. ‘Smells nice.’

‘Old recipe,’ she says, ‘like my momma used to make me. Thought your brother might like some.’

Something soft crosses Wanda’s face, and Laura smiles at the pan.

‘He’s in the – Clint says he’s going to take him to the cuddle pile. I don’t know what he means.’

Laura looks at her then, aghast. ‘You mean to tell me you have not been in the cuddle pile? This is an outrage.’ She laughs then, and asks if she can get the other bottle of milk out for her. ‘We’re going to need more cocoa than this.’

Wanda looks confused, but does as asked, and hands the bottle over. It doesn’t take long to get more cocoa made up, and Laura pours it carefully into four mugs.

As they take the mugs upstairs – Wanda refusing to allow Laura to carry more than one, so that she has a hand free for any Nath-related emergencies – Laura fills her stray daughter in on the joys of the cuddle pile.

‘It’s exactly what it says on the tin,’ she says, hand on her belly, ‘it’s a pile of cuddles. It started back when it was just me and Clint, but it became him and the kids more than anything. Him and the kids and the dog. It’s a blanket and pillow fort we keep in the nursery, you just go there and yell “cuddle pile” and the kids will be there in less than ten seconds, they never miss an opportunity for a cuddle pile.’

Wanda seems dubious.

‘Lucky usually lies at the end as a foot warmer,’ Laura adds.

Wanda is sold on the idea.

‘That’s really good,’ she says, ‘and anyone can do it?’

‘Just yell that you’re forming a cuddle pile and they appear out of the woodwork,’ Laura assures her. ‘Clint and the kids have stayed there all day in the past.’

‘Not you, though?’

‘I’ve had two kids and I’m about to have my third, my bladder can’t take it these days.’

Wanda nods to herself, and Laura leads her across the landing to the soft, pastel blue and white of Nathaniel’s nursery – Clint has done an absolutely flawless job here, she thinks, because every inch of the room’s paint and decor is immaculate, and the branch-and-bird decal stuck to one wall is painfully level – where Pietro has been dumped into a comfortable-looking pile of pillows and blankets. They’re an array of colour with him being a pyjama-clad spot of silver hair and blue check in the middle of it all. The hawkbabies are pressed either side of him, and his fingers press against their arms, a tentative embrace they are clearly comfortable in but he is not.

Lucky’s head pops up from its position on his paws when Laura enters, and she laughs.

‘No, sweetheart,’ she says, and crosses to the pile, ‘you’re not having any. This is for Pietro, not you. You keep on keeping his toes warm for me, there’s a good boy.’

 Lucky’s head drops back onto his paws, and Coop lurches upright to take the mug from his mother’s hand.

‘That’s for Pietro,’ she tells him, and he nods, very carefully sits back down to hand the mug over, keeping himself just away enough from him so that they don’t jostle on the pile.

Laura takes one of the other mugs from Wanda and hands it down to Coop, with Wanda handing one to Lila. She looks at Laura with the last, but Laura smiles.

‘That’s for you,’ she says, and Clint pushes off from the wall where he’d been resting, arms and ankles crossed, watching over his family carefully.

‘You’re staying with them, right?’ he asks, ‘cuddle piles require all important parties to stay; it’s one of the rules.’

Wanda looks at Laura, who nods a little, and she turns back to Clint.

‘I didn’t know,’ she says, ‘but yes. I’ll stay.’

‘Lila, move over a bit, give her some space,’ Clint says, and Lila immediately scoots a little further over, giving Wanda just enough room to get in between her and her brother. ‘Me and your momma are gonna go downstairs, okay? Wanda will be in charge.’

‘I’m older,’ Pietro grumbles, and Wanda gives him a look dirty enough that Laura almost feels proud. She obviously had no hand in it, but it’s the level of dirt that Lila’s developing, and it’s a beautiful thing to witness.

‘Wanda knows what she’s doing,’ Laura assures him. ‘You stay there and drink your cocoa. Don’t be afraid to call us if you need anything, we’re just a set of stairs away.’

Clint ushers her out with some goading comments about how there’s no such thing as ‘just a set of stairs,’ and they bicker until they’re downstairs and can’t be heard any more.

Pietro looks at his sister, who’s toeing the leg of her pyjama bottoms straight, and she smiles at him.

‘They’re good people,’ she assures him, in Sokovian, ‘they know what they’re doing.’

Hearing Sokovian again feels like a blessing, Pietro thinks, and he’s quick to chatter to his sister in their native language, telling her a thousand things he couldn’t have said in English. She listens, and the Barton kids listen too, but they don’t understand a word, obviously. They must be alright with that, though, because once they’ve downed their cocoa, they wriggle their way back into the pile, and go to sleep leant up against their elder counterparts. Pietro’s arm settles a little more easily around Coop’s shoulders this time, and Wanda rearranges Lila’s legs over her lap to make it easier on them both.

‘Honestly, though,’ she whispers, fingers combing through stray bits of Lila’s plaits. ‘You’ll be safe here. Happy.’

‘Are you happy?’

‘Happier than I have been in years,’ she says, ‘they – I don’t know what it is about this place. It doesn’t feel like home. But it’s like being at home.’

‘Laura looks like our mother,’ Pietro says. ‘Well, she doesn’t look anything like her. But it’s that feeling. You know?’

‘Clint, too,’ Wanda whispers, and an expression crosses her face like she’s scared. Angry, almost. ‘Nothing like our papa, but you’d never know it.’

Pietro looks at her, and she sighs heavily, shakes her head.

‘It feels weird,’ she says, ‘all this. I don’t know. I’ll be alright.’

He nudges her with his elbow, and it doesn’t whip out too fast. He doesn’t know who is more surprised.

‘Laura said that Clint’s stayed in the cuddle pile all day,’ Wanda tells him, ‘we can stay here if you want. Sleep some more if you need, I’ll keep – I’ll stay here.’

‘I’ll sleep if you do,’ he says, ‘it’s still early. Middle of the night, actually.’

 Wanda smiles, and takes the mug from her brother, sends all four of them over to the dresser on the wall by the door, far away from them and Lila’s kicking feet. She settles against her brother, and the cuddle pile falls into place. It’s nice, warm and soft and comfortable and natural. Clint’s clearly put effort into it, like he’s put effort into everything else in this house.

Honestly, he could say he built it from the ground up, and Wanda would believe him at this point, the house is breathing with the love he’s put into it, the love the Bartons have passed around, and it’s permeating the walls so deeply now. It’s a nice feeling.

‘Sleep,’ she tells her brother, and sends a couple of thoughts out, seeking out Clint and Laura, who are, from what she can tell, on the couch and talking. She leaves them where they are when the blackness of Clint’s consciousness lashes back against her, knocking the thoughts away, and returns to Pietro, who is starting to drift against her shoulder. ‘Sleep, brother, I’ll be right here.’

‘I know,’ he sighs, ‘you never leave.’

‘Never ever.’

Laura makes her way up to go to the bathroom after another couple of hours, and finds them tangled in the cuddle pile. Nodding to herself, she goes and drapes one of the blankets over them, gives Lucky a scratch behind the ears, and carries on her way.

* * *

_2015_

Wanda’s down with the worst cramps she’s had in months, so Laura gets out the baking trays and sets about making up a couple of Wanda’s favourite fruit cakes, the ones that they stayed up late in those first couple of weeks making. The kids enjoy the Jewish recipes Wanda’s introduced them to, and Laura enjoys cooking enough to want to perfect them.

Besides, fruit is good for cramps, but it’s sweet enough that it’ll help the low mood. Wanda is not a fan of being stuck in bed because of belly ache, and Laura has never heard of something more befitting of a Barton in her life.

Vision appears in the yard and comes sweeping in with his usual elegantly quiet stride, ducking through the door and offering Laura a smile.

‘Mrs Barton,’ he says, and Laura smiles in return.

‘Vision,’ she nods, ‘nice to see you. You’re looking well.’

He looks at himself; he’s duplicated Steve’s street clothes, jeans and a shirt and it doesn’t look anything like jeans and a shirt, but he’s trying. At least they’ve stopped trying to put him in actual clothes. That just looks silly.

‘I look the same as always,’ he says, and then, with a charming grin, ‘it is one of the perks of my synthetic nature.’

Laura chuckles, and adds more apple slices to the pan. ‘I’m very jealous,’ she tells him, and then assures him that she’s teasing. ‘I’m quite content being human.’

‘A very beautiful human,’ he tells her, ‘I hear everyone that knows you talk of your beauty. There are a few who are particularly taken.’

‘Well, I’m already taken,’ she tells him, and wiggles her ring finger.

‘He is one of the main culprits, I will admit.’

He approaches and stands beside her to watch her place the last couple of slices in the pan before scooping another ladle of cake mix into the pan.

‘What are you making?’ he asks, and tilts his head, as if the angle will help him identify it.

‘I forget the name,’ she admits, ‘but it’s a recipe Wanda gave me. I thought I’d make it for her.’

Vision’s gaze snaps fire-hot to her temple, and Laura bites the inside of her cheek to keep her smile down. He is just as obvious as her husband, and she supposes it’s because she’s so used to Clint’s obviousness that she sees it in Vision, but then again, he isn’t even a year old yet. He’s barely weeks older than Nathaniel, and that’s honestly adorable.

‘And how is Wanda?’ he asks, slowly, gaze now very firmly on the pan Laura is just scraping the last of the mix into. He tries to ask it calmly, smooth and sophisticated, but there’s a tight eagerness to his voice that Laura recognises so well.

‘She’s fine,’ she says, ‘laid up at the moment, but she’s alright.’

‘Laid up?’

‘Mm,’ Laura says, ‘mind your knees; I need to put this in the oven. She’s got some pretty bad cramps at the moment.’

She can practically hear the circuitry whizzing away as he searches his databases for something that would explain cramps. She hides a smile behind her hair as she turns to start on the washing up, and Vision eventually mumbles something incoherent to himself.

‘Is she,’ he starts, and then pauses, searches for the words. Laura waits. If she can teach Clint to use his words, she can teach Vision too. ‘The internet shows this to be a tender subject, so I hope you forgive my language if it is coarse. Would I be right in presuming that Wanda is menstruating?’

‘You would be right in presuming that, yes,’ Laura says, and rests a hand on his arm, briefly. ‘But don’t say it like that, it sounds so clinical. And trust me, periods are anything _but_ clinical.’

‘Periods,’ he whispers to himself, and she can see him storing the information away, probably alongside the calendar so that he can memorise Wanda’s cycle. Good luck with that, she thinks. ‘But other than this, she is fine?’

‘She’s fine,’ Laura assures him. ‘Help me with the drying up?’

Vision finds a towel and immediately begins to dry the utensils and bowls that Laura sets on the draining board.

‘I’m glad,’ he says, ‘and you, yourself? Are you also fine? Your children?’

‘We’re all good, thank you for asking,’ she tells him, and smiles up at him. ‘Having a newborn is hard work, but we’ve done it twice before, and we’ve got more pairs of hands than we know what to do with. We’re doing good.’

Vision glances over his shoulder towards the stairs; thinking about Wanda, Laura knows, thinking about cramps and periods and other such things. She doesn’t really know what kind of – ah – power? – he has, regarding his ability to Google things mentally. From what people have said, he seems to be able to access J.A.R.V.I.S.’s databases, whatever knowledge he had in his programming before the switch, but he’s not got Google for a brain. Maybe he has the kind of knowledge a teenage boy has before his sex ed classes. He’ll learn, either way.

‘You care about her a lot, don’t you?’ she asks, and Vision can’t colour, but he gives off the feeling of a blush.

‘She is – very special,’ he says, quiet, considering. ‘It is a different feeling than the one I have for you and your family, but it is strong, too. Stronger, almost. I do not understand.’

‘Nobody ever does,’ Laura assures him. ‘It’s part of what makes it so stressful.’

‘I feel no stress,’ he tells her, ‘only joy.’

‘Good. That’s how it should be.’

Vision thinks about this for a few minutes. ‘Is this how it is with Clint?’ he asks.

‘Ha, you’ve met him. You think we have a stress-free relationship?’

He supposes not.

‘I suppose not, no. But I have seen – there are some relationships so fraught with stress, and so riddled with mistrust and doubt that they are crippled with the pain of it. They stagnate and they suffer and eventually they collapse. Your husband and yourself, you seem happy.’

‘We are happy,’ she grins, ‘we’ve been together for a long time, and we have a good life. He’s the source of most of the stress, but I wouldn’t ever make him stop doing what he loved. He needs to do the things he does, and I respect that. I don’t have to like it – and I don’t, and he knows that – but I respect it. He comes home to me and to our kids. I can’t ask for more than that.’

Vision listens to this, and nods to himself when she’s done.

‘Would it be different, if you had been on the field with him?’

‘Perhaps. But he says that there were a few couples back when he worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. that broke up _because_ they were on the field together. Maybe it would have been different with us. I doubt we’d have ever gotten together had I been a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent too. If we had, I don’t doubt for a second that he’d have jeopardised enough missions that we were banned, or whatever. We’d never have made it.’

She glances over at him; he looks troubled now, and she bumps him with a hip.

‘It’s all just a what-if, though, because I don’t know how Clint handles his romantic feelings on the field, since I was never _on_ the field. Maybe he would have been perfectly fine with it, but we’ll never know. He’d be the one to ask. But if you trust her, and you respect her, then I don’t see why anything would be worse for it.’

‘What if I jeopardise the mission?’ he asks, ‘because I am too scared to see her hurt?’

She smiles. ‘I don’t know you too well, Vision,’ she says, ‘but I know her well enough to know that she’d be more likely to hurt herself trying to beat the snot out of you for thinking she can’t handle herself than she would be to get hurt in the line of duty. She’s been hurt before, and she’s come out on the other side.’

‘She’s all the more beautiful for it,’ Vision says, ‘she is like Kintsugi. It is a Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics – such as pots, or vases – with gold, adding a history and a beauty to the object, giving their flaws the respect they deserve and giving the ceramic love and honour for its past.’

Something crosses Laura’s face that makes Vision worry for her health.

‘Well,’ she says, mostly to herself, ‘well, that’s the end of that, isn’t it?’

Vision asks what she means.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Laura tells him, ‘honestly. Just an old girl talking to herself.’

‘You are forty-two, that does not constitute old,’ Vision protests.

‘And you’re not even eight months old,’ she replies. ‘God, now _that_ makes me feel so old.’

Vision’s expression could generously be called droll, and he doesn’t tell her a second time that she’s making too much of a fuss of being old. There is a saying, he recalls. Life begins at forty. He wonders if that is true.

A moment passes as Laura starts putting the bowls and utensils away, and then she waves a hand at Vision, who is lingering red and uncomfortable in the corner.

‘Go see her,’ she says, ‘she’ll be glad for some company. And don’t tell her about the cake, alright? It’s a surprise.’

‘My lips are sealed,’ he assures her, and tries to walk sedately from the room, but Laura hears him clatter up the stairs as soon as he’s out of sight.

‘What a perfect boy,’ she says to herself, and finishes putting everything away.

* * *

_2016_

When Nathaniel is eight months old, just after the new year, Laura gets a phone call. She’s not used to getting phone calls, because Clint’s phone is on the table in front of her, and he’s out in the garden somewhere with the kids, so her phone ringing is an uncomfortable sensation. Supporting Nathaniel with one hand, she leans to get the blasted thing before it rings off, and answers.

‘Hello?’ she asks, bounces Nathaniel when he starts fussing.

‘Is this Laura?’ comes a female voice from the other end of the phone.

‘Who’s asking?’ Laura demands, defensive and ready to yell for her husband.

‘Oh, I’m sorry! I’m Pepper Potts. Tony told me this was Laura’s number?’

Pepper Potts. Pepper Potts has her number and has called her and is talking to her.

‘I’m Laura,’ she says, suddenly breathless.

Haha, Pepper Potts.

Somehow that hits harder than you know, the Avengers.

‘Hi,’ Pepper says, and suddenly sounds very normal and girlish and – and – she sounds like a thousand other women. ‘As I said, Tony passed the number to me, he thought it might be in our mutual interests to get to know one another. How does lunch sound?’

 ‘Um. I’m – I’m not really supposed to – leave the farm.’

‘Oh,’ Pepper says, as though she hadn’t considered this. ‘Right. I just thought it would be nice for you to get out of the house for a while. Tony showed me a map, and Marshalltown isn’t far out from where he says the farm is. His directions are awful, though, so I hope that’s right.’

Marshalltown is about an hour away from the farm, and it’s where Laura goes when she has to do groceries.

‘I mean,’ she says, ‘I do leave the farm. Of course I do. I have to do groceries. But. Are you sure it’s a good idea? I mean, I’m not very. Secret? If I’m having lunch with Stark Industries’ CEO.’

Laura feels very out of her depth, and that doesn’t happen often any more. Thankfully, Pepper takes it all in stride.

‘Who’s going to know? If any paparazzi see us – and why would they? Who’s going to be looking for me in a small place like Marshalltown? – I’ll just tell them you’re a friend from college.’

Laura considers this, runs her fingers over Nathaniel’s head, brushing through the little hair he’s got.

‘I. I suppose,’ she says, biting at her lip. ‘You’re sure it’d be safe?’

‘Absolutely,’ Pepper assures her. ‘If you don’t feel safe at any point, I’ll take you home, and we won’t do it again. I just thought it would be nice.’

 Wanda appears in the doorway, eyebrow quirked. Are you alright, she mouths, and Laura nods, but her expression is troubled enough that the girl lingers.

‘Yeah,’ she says after a moment or so has passed. ‘Yeah, that sounds like it could be nice. When – when did you want to meet?’

‘How’s – I’ve got a board meeting tomorrow, but the day after? I’ll pick you up about eleven?’

Laura looks at Wanda, who is clearly listening in, and then nods.

‘That sounds great. Am I alright to bring Nathaniel with me?’

‘Nathaniel?’

‘My youngest. Tony didn’t tell you? I was pregnant when Clint first brought them here.’

 ‘Oh! Yes, of course, I’m sorry, I totally lost the name there. I don’t normally.’

‘It’s fine,’ Laura assures her with a laugh. ‘I don’t mind, and he’s too young to know.’

Pepper laughs, and after assuring her she was absolutely fine to bring Nathaniel with her, repeats that eleven o’clock day after next, and wishes her well before hanging up. Laura stares at her phone for a second, and then looks at Wanda.

‘I have a lunch date,’ she says with a baffled shrug.

* * *

_2015_

Thor comes to visit early in the autumn, just as the leaves are beginning to turn red. It’s late in the evening, the sun finally down enough for the stars to shine, and Cooper is sat on a blanket with his star maps open around him, held down by rocks and he’s got he’s got a pair of binoculars in his hand. For a moment, after the smell of burning leaves has been swept away by the breeze, they look at each other.

‘Momma and Dad are in the lounge,’ Cooper says. ‘They’re watching a film.’

When Thor doesn’t move, just continues to stare, Cooper clutches the binoculars tighter. They won’t do much, but something is better than nothing.

‘Are you alright?’ he asks, because he’s a sensitive kid, smart, but he’s not even in double digits yet.

‘Those are star maps,’ Thor says, and strides over, dropping to the ground next to him and peering at the maps through his tousled hair. ‘Jane has star maps.’

Cooper has seen Thor precisely three times. Once, the first time he came to the farm, and that wasn’t for very long, because he was far more interested in his father, and not the new arrivals. By the time he brought himself to care about the strangers in his house, Thor had gone, so that was that. The second time was when he stayed for dinner, after bringing Momma some new mugs. Lila said he brought them over because he broke one the first time he was here. Cooper’s fine with that, because at least he’s got manners. This time is the third time, and he’s not sure how to handle him.

He knows how to handle Uncle Steve now, and he’s not seen the science guy since that first time. Bruce? Was that his name? Whatever, he’s not seen him since, and bringing him up upsets Aunty Nat, and he’s not about to do that, Momma’s warning stare or not.

‘Who is Jane?’ Cooper asks, and carefully shuffles to the side to give Thor space to sit beside him on the blanket.

‘She is my – my – she is very important to me. She studies the stars, the same as you. Her research was published, I believe. The Foster Theory.’

Cooper sits up straight. ‘Foster? _Jane Foster_? Jane Foster! You never said Jane Foster!’

Thor’s face lights up, a big beaming grin stretching across his face.

‘Jane Foster!’ he echoes in that booming voice, so full of glee and pride. Cooper knows that tone, hears it in his dad’s voice. ‘You know of her! She is wonderful, is she not?’

‘I think so,’ Cooper replies with a nod, because he does think she’s wonderful. ‘She’s very smart. I don’t know all the words she uses, but I think I understand it.’

 Thor nods, because he doesn’t know all the words Jane uses, but he understands what she’s saying when she puts it in plainer English than all that fancy earth science speak.

‘She won a prize,’ he says.

Cooper nods, and lunges to one of the star maps. Under it, there is a book, with a picture of a star map on the cover.

‘The Nobel Prize!’ he says, and hurries through the pages until he comes to the right chapter. ‘This is her theory!’

Thor leans over to look at it. The lighting isn’t great, but he manages to make out Jane’s name, and some of the words on the page. He doesn’t know how to pronounce half of them.

As they peer at the page, the porch door swings open, and Clint pokes his head out.

‘Everything alright?’ he asks.

Thor leaps to his feet, and Cooper waves.

‘Hawkeye!’ Thor exclaims, and offers Cooper a nod before striding over to him. ‘I have things to discuss!’

Cooper can see his dad’s nose wrinkle from here.

‘Can’t it wait until the morning?’ he asks, but steps aside, lets Thor in. He glances back at Coop. ‘Ten more minutes,’ he calls to his son, ‘and then I want you in.’

‘Okay!’ Cooper calls back, and jabs himself in the eye with his binoculars in his haste to get them up against his face.

He’d been trying to find Aquila, which should be visible slightly to the right and down a bit of his current position, but he’s struggling to locate it. He still hasn’t found it when Dad makes good on his promise to give him ten more minutes. (He actually has eleven, but that’s probably why Dad came to get him.) After packing up, they head back inside, and Cooper talks about his findings.

‘Aquila is giving me trouble,’ he says with a pout, and Clint glances at him.

‘Tell you what,’ he says, ‘tomorrow, we’ll look together, yeah? I think I know where I’m looking to find it.’

Cooper nods, and hands his dad the blanket when he gestures.

‘Go say goodnight to your mother, and get those teeth of yours brushed before bed.’

Cooper nods again, lurches up to get his arms around his dad’s neck for a bruising hug before rushing off to the lounge to give his mother a kiss goodnight. As Clint puts the blanket away, he hears Thor laugh, and then laugh louder when Cooper presumably bids him a goodnight too.

In the morning, Jane Foster is waiting for the oldest Barton son, looking ready for action in a baggy sweater with a mug of Laura’s nigh-famous cocoa in her hands.

Cooper is the third of the kids up; Lila and Wanda are up and fed and dressed before he surfaces, and he stumbles sleep-blind into the kitchen for breakfast and good morning kisses. It’s not until he pauses next to Jane’s seat at the table, having made his way around to her, that he realises there is an extra body at the table that is not normally there. He peers blearily at her for a second or two, and the table waits for his sleepy boy brain to catch up.

(‘So like his father,’ Laura will tease later, and Clint will flick a Cheerio at her.)

Then he yells and stumbles back and does something that could, in favourable light, be generously described as an interpretive dance.

‘Hello, Cooper,’ Jane says, and smiles.

Cooper looks like he’s about to faint. Laura reaches out to steady him with a hand, pushing him back onto the flat of his feet. Wanda’s fingers curl, and the air shifts, balances, holds him steady.

‘Hello,’ he squeaks.

They stare at each other – well, Cooper stares. Jane just continues to smile at him, gentle and easy, patient.

‘Um,’ he says. He shuffles.

‘Thor said you like the stars,’ Jane offers, because otherwise he will stand there all day. ‘He asked if I could come and help?’

‘I’m struggling to find Aquila,’ he blurts out, and goes bright red.

Jane’s eyes flick briefly to Laura, who gives her that motherly, knowing smile that she gives everyone. The cogs whir, rattle, screech to a halt with the answer. Aquila. Bird. Hawkeye. Of course.

‘Just south of Sagitta,’ she says with an idle nod. ‘It can be hard to find if you can’t get a fix on Altair.’

‘That’s the brightest star?’ Cooper asks, and Jane nods.

‘Coop, sweetheart, breakfast,’ Laura reminds him, and his eyes go wide, scurries around the table, stopping off to greet his dad before going about breakfast.

Cereal obtained, he sits himself at the table, and the set of his shoulders means he is not going to move until Clint physically removes him from the table. Clint, however, is occupied with Lila, who has been grumpy since getting out of bed, and has no time to carry his son back to his bedroom to get dressed.

At least he brushed his teeth before coming downstairs, he supposes.

Cooper sits there with Jane for most of the morning. Pietro eventually surfaces, stumbling into the kitchen looking rough, and gets his breakfast before vacating again, taking the ever-errant Lila with him. Clint and Laura disappear back into the lounge with Nathaniel, and Wanda retreats to, presumably, her room. Honestly, Cooper doesn’t pay much attention, because Jane’s got his star maps, and his notebook, and she’s talking him through the constellations, and what science has found out about stars.

She doesn’t talk about her theory, or her work, just what she learnt at school, the stuff Cooper is learning now. She asks him questions, as though she doesn’t know. Of course she knows, but Cooper is flattered that she’s asking him. _Him_!

Thor comes crashing in around lunchtime, and loudly compliments Cooper on his choice of pyjamas. They have a witty slogan about sleep on the t-shirt. He looks down at himself.

‘Cooper!’ Clint calls from the lounge. ‘Did I just hear that you’re still in your pyjamas?’

Cooper looks at Jane, who smiles into her mug without looking at him.

‘Um. Um. Excuse me for a moment,’ he babbles, and shoves away from the table to rush upstairs to get dressed.

Clint leans around the doorframe, and Jane looks at him.

‘You’re horrible,’ she says.

He shrugs, offers her a charming, easy grin, and steps in to check on the coffee machine.

‘How is he?’ he asks, idle, glancing over his shoulder, and Jane hums.

‘He’s good,’ she says, ‘very good. Very intelligent. Knows his stars.’

‘Wish he’d do his geography homework,’ Clint grunts, and gets two mugs out of the cupboard before pausing. ‘Coffee?’

‘Please. Geography will come later. Let him look at the stars. It’ll keep him out of trouble.’

Clint stops mid-motion and turns to look at her. Jane has the decency to look sheepish.

‘At least he won’t be punching people?’ she tries, and Clint gives her that one, finishes getting the mugs down, and waits for the pot to finish brewing before pouring it out and handing it over.

By the time he’s done, Cooper’s back downstairs, dressed and with another stack of books in his arms.

‘Well,’ Clint laughs, ‘I’m out of here, leave you nerds to it.’

He ruffles both of their hair, despite Jane’s loud protests, takes his and Laura’s (matching) mugs, and disappears back to the safety of the lounge and the Disney movie playing on the TV.

Cooper climbs back into his chair, and hefts the books onto the table.

‘These are all the books I got,’ he says, ‘my Aunty Ma – my Aunty bought them for me for birthday presents. I’ve almost got the whole set.’

Jane leans to look at the spines, reading the titles.

‘These are good books,’ she says, ‘your Auntie’s got good taste.’

 She glances at Cooper, who puffs up a little in pride at his Aunt Maria’s book choices.

They spend another couple of hours poring over the star maps and books, with Jane helping define words Cooper has trouble with. Once, Lila comes crashing through the kitchen, and it’s only when they hear Pietro scream and start laughing that they realise he’d come through first.

‘He does that,’ Cooper says, when Jane continues staring at the door Lila had crashed through in pursuit of her brother. ‘It’s his superpower. Being fast.’

 Jane turns wide eyes to him.

‘Science, I think,’ he says, and shoves a book over to her, finger on a long, complicated word, ‘do you know what this word means?’

Jane is still looking bothered when Pietro comes stumbling through the other way, at a reasonable, normal speed. His sleeve is torn, and he looks very disgruntled, mumbling under his breath in Sokovian.

(When Laura comes in to start on lunch, sending Cooper off to play with his brother for twenty minutes, Jane asks how she manages superpowers. Laura looks like she’s never considered it, and admits it’s no different to having non-super children, you just have to make sure all the breakables are a bit safer than they’d have to be in a normal house. She then adds, with a peculiarly serene smile, that it’s never been a normal house. Jane can believe it.)

 -0-0-0-

Late one morning, as Wanda sits between Cooper and Lila, eating cereal and watching Laura give Pietro’s hair a trim from the corner her eye, she asks about the term “stray.” Pietro complains about losing most of his silver, and Laura tells him the roots were the most atrocious thing she had ever seen.

‘I’ll get Clint to pick up some dye on the way home, if it bothers you that much.’

She flicks his ear, and then Laura turns back to Wanda, explains as best she can.

‘It’s something we – Clint and I, I mean – started saying maybe fifteen years ago? Nat – Black Widow – she was the first stray Clint brought home. She had no-one else, you know? She followed him home like a stray dog, and when he told her she shrugged it off. Lucky was a stray, too, weren’t you, boy?’ She leans over to pet the dog’s ear, and Wanda can’t see him, but she can hear his tail thumping against the tiles.

‘Strays,’ she says, trying the word out. ‘I suppose we’re strays too, now. We have no-one else, and nowhere else to go.’

‘Barton Strays,’ Laura smiles. ‘We’ll have to make T-shirts.’

* * *

_2015_

Maybe a week after Nathaniel comes home from the hospital, Laura gets up in the middle of the night to find Pietro awake and sat at the kitchen table.

‘You should have woken someone,’ she says, and he gestures.

‘Sis walked me,’ he says, and Laura doesn’t buy it, but knows Wanda would know her brother was awake and not let him go without supervision.

‘Alright,’ Laura says with a nod, ‘alright. Do you want cocoa?’

‘No, it’s alright,’ he says, with a sigh. ‘I’m. I’m shaking.’

She looks at his hand, held still at shoulder height. The tremors are especially bad tonight, skin and bone and muscle shivering with the speed of his powers rattling his core. When the light catches him just right, she can see the trail he leaves, a shimmering blue streak from each point that fades into the shadows of the kitchen.

‘Oh, Piet,’ she sighs, and forgoes the cocoa to drag his chair out enough to get in beside him, arms tight around him, one hand in his hair, the other on his neck. His skin is buzzing under her hands, and his breath catches before it breaks, and he sobs into her chest. ‘Shh, sweetheart, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.’

Guilt aches along the line of the old scar on her belly, because she hasn’t abandoned him in favour of Nathaniel, because Pietro had understood that Nathaniel was premature, he wasn’t due for another month, but a week was not long enough to adjust, to recover, to be “back to normal.” She’d given him what she could, but it hadn’t been enough, and she knew it wasn’t enough.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispers, and ducks down to kiss his head.

He swallows thickly, raises his arms as slowly as he can, manages to stop them jerking too high before he wraps them around her in turn.

‘I’m sorry,’ he echoes back, quiet, into the soft curve of her belly, the light cotton of her pyjama top. ‘I’m sorry.’

He’s got nothing to apologise for, and she hauls him to his feet to hug him properly, squeezing him as tight as she can. She assures him, as he sobs into her neck, that he has nothing to apologise for, that he’s alright, that she loves him.

‘You’re a Barton now,’ she teases, presses a hand warm to the curve of his spine. Too bony, she thinks, the spike of his bones too sharp. ‘You’re one of us. One of mine.’

He shivers in her arms, and eventually goes still. She keeps humming to him, soothing and gentle and so maternal his heart cracks enough that he feels Wanda poking her fingers in to see what’s worrying him. For the first time, he shuts her out, slams the doors and blocks her from the swelling warmth that is forming in the shadowy shape of Laura’s voice. It’s selfish, he knows, because she misses their mother as much as he does, more, perhaps. But for tonight, at least, he wants to keep this to himself.

 ‘There we go,’ Laura hums soft, and pulls away, runs both of her hands through his hair, cups his face. ‘You need a trim, punk, you’re getting scruffy.’

His grin is helpless, unforced and even a little giddy.

‘Would you?’ he asks, ‘trim, I mean.’

She nods, and tugs him down the almost-foot between them to kiss his forehead. ‘Of course I will. In the morning, though. For now; cocoa?’

He looks at his hands behind her back, watches the fingertips tremble, but no more than hers do, no more than Clint’s do, and Clint has to have the steadiest hands Pietro has ever seen.

‘Yeah,’ he says, lets the doors open and Wanda’s thoughts swell against his, demand space to examine and probe and feel, ‘yeah, that would be nice.’

She pats his arm and tells him to go through to the lounge, put a movie on if he liked.

‘Clint said he’d take Nathaniel tonight, but I can’t sleep, so I’ll be staying up. You’re welcome to stay.’

Wanda is content that Pietro is safe and happy as he can be, and retreats, shutting the doors behind her. He relishes the silence she leaves, the peace. Like freshly laundered sheets and an open window after rain. It’s nice. He could do with more of that when he’s sleeping.

‘I’d like to stay,’ he says, and finds some harmless movie from the collection that neither of them have to pay attention to.

It’s mostly just background noise for them anyway, because Laura asks him questions, gentle, about home and before Ultron and before Stark, and he answers as best he can. He tells her everything she asks about, and more besides, tells her stories about his and Wanda’s childhood, tells her stories of the rebellion, of the fights they used to get into in Sokovia, in the streets in the middle of the night with people twice their size and with far more experience.

‘You really are Bartons, aren’t you?’ she chuckles softly, and reaches up to comb some of his hair back from his face. ‘Can’t leave well enough alone to save your life.’

He smiles then, a bitter sort of smile, and she tweaks his ear.

‘You did well by him,’ she says, ‘he told me, when he first brought Wanda back, about what you did. We all thought you were gone then. He told me you died to save him. It was noble. He owes you his life. I owe you for bringing my husband home.’

Pietro sniffles. ‘You don’t owe me anything. You looked after Wanda. You’ve given us both a home. I can’t ask anything from you.’

‘Ask for the world,’ Laura tells him, honest. ‘Clint would find a way. You deserve so much more than we’ve given you, Piet. We’ll give you all we can. You and Wanda both.’

She thumbs a wet spot from the corner of his eye and tells him to never hesitate on asking for support again. He promises, and wriggles his way under her arm to fall asleep ten minutes later, curled up against her like an overgrown puppy or a son content.

* * *

_2015_

‘Do you need a hand?’

Laura glances up, and greets Steve with a smile.

‘Shouldn’t you be out there partying?’ she asks, and Steve’s mouth twists.

‘I’ve had enough of that for a while,’ he says, and looks back outside before stepping inside fully. ‘It’s a bit. Much?’

Laura nods, and gestures at the lettuce.

‘Get stuck in,’ she says, and turns back to her carrot sticks.

Steve washes his hands, taking his watch off to make sure he’s clean from fingertip to mid-arm, and after making sure he’s dry, he gets started on washing and cutting the lettuce.

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he says, ‘I appreciate it, I really do! It’s – it’s nice, you know? I’ve never really, um. Had a party? But I wasn’t expecting – this, I guess?’

 Laura watches him from the corner of her eye, and nods when he falls silent.

‘I understand,’ she assures him, and tosses the carrot into the bowl before starting on the next. ‘We’ve always had a party on the Fourth, but now we’ve got a reason to have a proper party. And you deserve a good birthday, Steve. You work so hard to protect the world, just kick back for a day, enjoy yourself. Spend some time with the kids.’

‘Lila’s wearing a USO outfit,’ Steve tells her, ‘it was a bit of a shock. It’s a nice adaptation, though. I don’t know what shocked me more, that or that she knew all the words to the song.’

Laura laughs, and tells him that Lila knows all of the routine too, and has often utilised her brother and father in the form of Hitler. Steve’s lips twitch, but he mostly manages to keep the smile down.

‘Oh,’ he says, ‘she didn’t seem the sort the first time I was here.’

‘She’s,’ Laura starts, and casts about for the word. ‘She’s not _shy_. But she doesn’t have a lot of outside interaction. It was about the shyest I’ve ever seen her, that first time you were here.’

Steve vividly recalls her not remaining shy for long, racing back and forth between her parents, “Aunty” Nat and “Grandpa Nick” (who had levelled them with a look, and they’d promised to never repeat it) before eventually turning to Tony and Steve himself. Bruce had been acknowledged, Steve recalls, but Lila – and Cooper, too – had not been particularly interested in spending time with him. Cooper was more interested in Tony, and Lila had clung so close to Steve she’d ended up dozing off in his lap. Clint had reclaimed his daughter when Steve had made worried faces in his direction, but Lila had seemed content enough to rest there most of the evening.

Maybe in a few months, Steve won’t mind that so much. Right now, though, he’d rather she didn’t.

Pietro skids to a stop in the open doorway, and brings the smell of the barbeque with him.

‘The old man wants to know how you’re doing,’ he says.

Steve is still not used to seeing Pietro up and about and looking healthy and happy and enjoying, intensely, having a secure family unit to interact with. It’s nice to see, especially when Wanda engages in conversation too.

‘We’re doing alright,’ Laura assures him, and rinses the knife off before starting on an onion. Steve starts on a third lettuce. ‘You tell the old man to keep his pants on, and we’ll be out when we’re done. And send your sisters in to help take this outside.’

He salutes, and zooms off back the way he came. There’s loud yelling of his name, and Clint shouts something in Italian that makes Natasha howl.

Wanda comes in with Lila in tow, and they start carrying the ready bowls out, net covers under Wanda’s arm ready for use once everything’s on the table.

‘I’m glad they’re doing so well here,’ Steve says.

Laura smiles at him. ‘We’re working on it. You can stay, too, you know. Any time you need. Is the lettuce done?’

He nods, and hands the bowl over, asking what she wants him to do next. She directs him to the bread, and he washes his hands again before getting stuck in.


	7. Home Comforts

_2015_

Having not expected quite as many visitors in one day as they’d gotten, Clint enlists Nat and Steve in helping him get a list of groceries that Laura whips up with startling speed.

‘I’ve got enough to feed about ten people,’ she says, ‘because that’s how many I was expecting. I wasn’t planning on everyone else too.’

‘Neither was I,’ Clint assures her, and looks accusingly at the too-innocent Avengers-filled table.

So off they go, list in hand. When they return, Steve carrying most of the bottles because like hell are Clint and Nat, both of whom have had recent shoulder and/or back injuries carrying six two-litre bottles of pop in both hands, they bypass the living room entirely for the kitchen.

On their way back through on the second trip to get the last couple of bags, Clint pokes his nose in on the kids, sprawled out in the living room with their colouring books. He’s got sweets for them that they need to hide from Laura, and he stops in his tracks, because Bucky is there between them, mimicking their pose of lying on their fronts, ankles crossed in the air, and he’s trading crayons with Lila, because she has the green he wants, and he gives her the purple he’d been using. Honestly, he hadn’t expected Bucky to be involved with their activities, especially given that Lila still hadn’t gotten over the fact that _the_ Bucky Barnes was, like, _right there_ , even though he’d been there at least four times.

‘Hello, kids,’ he laughs, and bites his lip before throwing a bag of Haribo at Bucky’s head too.

The assassin flinches, and when he turns, rubbing his head, Clint grins at him.

‘For you,’ he says, ‘as an honorary Barton colourer.’

Bucky looks at the Haribo on the floor, still rubbing his head. He has a look on his face that Clint knows well.

‘Don’t _cry_ about it, you dummy,’ Clint tells him, ‘it’s a bag of Haribo.’

‘Clint!’ Laura calls, and she has that tone.

He winces. Lila and Cooper both turn to grin up at him.

‘Yeah?’

‘What have you done to Bucky now? If you’ve upset him, I’ll have to have words!’

‘I haven’t done anything!’ he crows.

He looks back at the kids, presses a finger to his lips, and then heads into the kitchen, still loudly protesting his innocence.

‘Dad’s great,’ Lila tells Bucky, reaching across his page to steal the pink from her brother’s pile of crayons, ‘but don’t let him challenge you to _Mario Kart_.’

‘What is _Mario Kart_?’ Bucky asks.

Lila looks positively distraught.

‘Dad!’ she yells, shoving to her feet. ‘Dad, Bucky doesn’t know about _Mario Kart_! _Dad_!’

Bucky looks to Cooper for some kind of reassurance, but the boy is just as traitor as his sister and smiles at his colouring book.

Despair is not an unfamiliar feeling, if he’s totally honest.

* * *

_1994_

The first time Clint comes home riddled with injuries, Laura freely admits that she panics. Clint, wheezing a little, and tapping his ears, tells her that everything’s stitched up and she doesn’t need to worry about him, he just needs to shower and sleep and eat.

‘Honestly,’ he laughs, as she bolts the door and herds him towards the bathroom, ‘babe, I’m fine.’

‘Don’t you “babe” me, Clinton Francis,’ she snipes, and eases his jacket off his shoulders, tosses it back towards the hall. She immediately apologises, because she almost hit Lucky with it.

The retriever comes to the door, looks at his owner, lingers a moment or three, and then turns and heads into the lounge, hopping up onto the couch and going, quite contentedly, to sleep. Laura continues to strip Clint down, getting him down to his boxers to give him a proper once-over.

‘I don’t care if you say you’re all stitched up,’ she says, ‘I want to make sure you’re alright.’

‘I’m fine,’ he tells her again, and she gives him a look, kneels to look at a particularly nasty-looking gash on his thigh. ‘Everything’s stitched and they put that weird glue shit on it too, just to make sure I didn’t tear it. It should heal without a scar, providing I don’t pull it open.’

‘Is it waterproof?’ she asks, and when he nods, assures her it is, she gets back to her feet and puts the plug into the tub’s drain, turns the hot tap. ‘You’re not having a shower.’

‘I just want to sleep,’ he tells her, that familiar exhausted-child whine creeping in. ‘Get clean and sleep.’

‘Then sleep in the bath,’ she tells him, finds the bottle of bubble bath amongst the shampoos and body washes and shaving gels, pours a generous amount into the tub. ‘I’ll clean you up, you sleep.’

He looks at her, a serious sort of frown. It doesn’t look nearly as intimidating as it would if he wasn’t in just his boxers and black-and-blue with rapidly-forming bruises.

‘Clint,’ she says, in a no-argument tone.

‘Get in the bath with me,’ he bargains. ‘I’ll sleep if you’re there.’

She eyes him, and watches him waver. There’s no way she can trust him to keep himself upright, and eventually she nods.

‘Alright, you win. Just to keep you upright.’

‘If that’s what it takes,’ he agrees, jovial enough.

It doesn’t take much to keep Clint happy, Laura’s learnt, and she slips into the bath behind him, tugging him back a little to fit better between her legs. He sags against her, and she feels his heart immediately slow to beat in time with hers, his breathing evening out.

‘You’re soft,’ Clint hums, quiet, and his fingers trace patterns against the curve of her knee. ‘Warm. ‘S nice.’

‘Glad you appreciate it. Sleep, honey, I’ll keep you safe.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he sighs, and is asleep in a straight minute.

* * *

_1995_

Laura wakes late, far later than she needs. Springing upright in bed, she leans over Clint, who’s prone and grumbling about being jostled, and she squawks at the time on his alarm.

‘Oh, fuck me,’ she moans, and leaps out of bed.

‘Get back in bed and I will,’ Clint murmurs, and she halts her search for her knickers to whirl around and give him a dirty look.

‘I’m late for work,’ she tells him, ‘aha! There they are! God, Clint, I’m so late. I can make it on time if I hurry.’

Clint rolls over, sheet bunched invitingly, and she studiously ignores him. She has one shoe on but no skirt and her blouse is undone before she thinks to go to the bathroom. Her strangled scream makes him laugh.

‘Clint!’ she yelps, face washed and red, neck bruised beautifully by his teeth. ‘Look at what you’ve done!’

He looks proud of himself, looking over her neck with unabashed glee.

‘I did well,’ he says. ‘Made quite a nice pattern on the left - my left, I mean, it’s really quite a - ow! No hitting the super secret special agent boyfriend!’

Laura slaps his arm again before hurrying to her handbag. ‘God, you’re so lucky I brought my makeup with me! How am I going to cover this?’

There’s a pawing at the door, and then Lucky works out the handle, let’s himself in. Clint calls him up onto the bed, and the dog settles neatly beside owner to watch Laura frantically try to cover a particularly purple lovebite.

‘You know my place is further than yours by a good thirty minutes, right?’

‘That’s been accounted for,’ Laura assures him. ‘I’ve got ten minutes to get to the subway before I’m officially late.’

‘You’ll never make that,’ Clint says with a glance at the clock. ‘Even with traffic going your way, it’s gridlocked this time of day.’

Laura hesitates, and he slips out of bed to sneak behind her, hands on her hips, fingertips teasing at her underwear.

‘You never take a day off,’ he murmurs in her ear, hot breath fanning and making her shiver. ‘You’ve got a few days saved up. Take one, and come back to bed.’

She wavers, almost there but not quite. Clint ducks in to kiss her ear, tugging at the lobe. Laura shudders, body caving in towards his, and Clint grins.

‘But there are meetings,’ she tells him, in a tone that suggests she doesn’t really care. ‘I’m supposed to take notes.’

His grin bites against her already bruised neck. It shouldn’t turn her on. The thought of skipping work to fuck shouldn’t turn her on. Clint standing warm and naked against her back, smelling of her perfume and sex, well okay, that makes sense as a turn on. But she shouldn’t like it quite as much as does.

‘You’d rather take notes on some boring business meeting than have me takes notes on how to make you scream my name?’

She would bite back, would have a thousand witty remarks, but Clint’s pressing the phone into her hand.

Somehow, she cobbles together a story about bad food, about food poisoning, and she hopes her moans are pained enough to be believable, because it’s hard to concentrate with your hot boyfriend getting handsy. She knows Clint’s handsy, but it always catches her off-guard. After assuring her boss that she’ll be in tomorrow and making up the hours where she can, she hangs up and drops the phone onto a pile of clothes.

‘See?’ Clint hums, tapping at her inner thigh so she’ll move her legs further apart. ‘Not so hard, was it?’

‘No,’ Laura agrees, gladly using his abs as a wall to support herself against. ‘I suppose not. Come on then, take me to bed, mister.’

He grins against her ear and gleefully does so, though admittedly Lucky is in the way until Clint gets up to put him some food down and make him stay in the lounge.

‘Wash your hands!’ Laura calls, and Clint mimics her with a snooty sort of expression. ‘And I know you’re pulling a face, so if you want me to continue skipping in favour of sex with you, you might want to not.’

If she wasn’t Laura, he might be worried that she had some superpower, but Laura knows him too well. So off goes the expression and on goes the hand soap.

Hands washed, he returns to the bedroom and shuts the door behind him.

* * *

_2016_

Lila wants to go on the teacups, and drags Natasha to the queue by the hand. Natasha scoops her up with a laugh, carries her back to the rest of the party.

‘It’s only fair,’ she says, ‘if we ask everyone else along too.’

‘I’m out,’ Sam says, ‘I’ll stay with Nath.’

Pietro watches the ride, looking a little green. ‘I’ll stay behind too,’ he says, ‘it’s making me - um. Cheesy.’

‘Queasy,’ Bucky corrects automatically, and Sam shares a smile with Natasha, who looks a little proud of him for being so natural about it. ‘I’ll go then. I haven’t been on a ride since that one time at Coney Island.’

As they wait in the queue, he tells them stories about Steve and Coney Island, and Sam and Pietro find somewhere to sit, Sam pulling Nath out of his stroller for more cuddles. Laura is always holding him, and he’s noticed the boy gets antsy if he’s not held for long periods, which is more than fine with him, because he feels more comfortable holding Nath than he does not.

When they reach the front of the queue, Natasha ushers the hawks up to the cup before climbing in herself. It’s a bit of a tight fit, but Bucky and Nat loop their arms over the back and Lila presses close into Bucky’s side to make more room.

‘Please don’t throw up on me,’ Bucky says.

Lila promises nothing.

Coop wriggles in tight between Natasha and Wanda, and they wait patiently for the ride to begin. They’re barely spinning at first, and it slowly picks up speed. Very slowly, because it’s a kids’ ride, after all.

‘Bucky,’ Natasha says, ‘spin it a bit, would you? I don’t think we’ve been spun for a couple of rotations.’

 She doesn’t think anything, Bucky thinks, because he knows from her visits to the farm, and the stories Clint’s told, that Nat never says anything she’s not sure of. So he takes her word, and pulls with his metal arm.

It’s not the wisest idea he’s ever had. It’s not too fast, but it’s faster than it should be going, a couple more rotations than Health and Safety say it should be.

Lila’s shoulder digs into Bucky’s ribs, and he glances at Nat, eyes wide. She looks so blasé about the whole thing and moves her arm down to support Coop, even as Wanda clutches at the rail.

‘Sir,’ the attendant says, but they’ve already moved on before they can catch the teacup and slow it down, ‘sir, please don’t spin the teacup.’

Bucky tries to slow it by pulling with the other arm, but it’s no use. Thankfully, the ride begins to come to a stop after a minute more, and Lila slams into him as Coop slams back into Nat.

‘Oh dear,’ he says, and Natasha smiles.

Wanda has better equilibrium than the children, but she staggers a bit as she gets off the ride, stumbling down the steps before finding her feet as she heads to where Pietro and Sam are.

‘Piet!’ she calls. ‘Piet, you might have to catch them.’

He gets up, and slips through the crowd to wait. Nat has gotten Cooper off the ride, and he stumbles several steps sideways before Bucky, still in the ride with Lila, catches him and straightens him up. Pietro helps him down the steps, and watches him as he staggers off across the tarmac to Sam and Wanda. He’s got to lunge after him when he abruptly veers to one side, and his trainers squeal as he skids to a stop, catching Cooper before he trips over his feet.

‘Careful now,’ he laughs, and Coop holds onto him.

‘Very spinny,’ Coop laughs, and shakes his head, taking the dizziness with it.

Pietro is pretty sure he’s about to throw up now, so he leaves him with his sister, who leads him to a bin, and turns back to watch the debacle that is Bucky trying to coax Lila to her feet. She’s almost horizontal, and he’s hauling her by the underarms to where Natasha is waiting for her.

‘Put your back into it!’ he calls, and Bucky gives him a filthy look over his shoulder.

Natasha carries Lila to the steps, and Bucky follows them down. Once they’re on stable, solid ground, Nat puts her niece down, and they watch Lila stumble off towards the rest of the party. She wavers side to side like a drunk, and zig-zags every few steps.

‘I don’t think we’ll be doing that again in a hurry,’ Natasha says, cheerful.

‘I’m not doing that again,’ Bucky grumbles.

Pietro is glad he didn’t get in the teacup.

Quite why they stand there and watch Lila stumbling instead of helping her is something they never actually discuss, but stand there they did. Maybe it was because it was funny, in that do-it-for-the-vine kind of way. Lila’s about halfway between the two parties when she does trip, but Pietro is there, catching her around the middle before she topples, and when she heaves, he hauls her to the bin as fast as he can. It probably makes her throw up faster, but at least it’s in the bin.

* * *

_1997_

Being a man born of necessity, of desperation, of limited resource, it goes without saying that Clint can be showered, dressed and out of the door in fifteen minutes flat. Laura has worked out his average time in the bathroom of a morning at around seventeen minutes, and if he exceeds that, she listens for the sound of his electric razor. If she doesn’t hear it, she gives a quick knock to check he’s still conscious and able to function.

Most mornings, he tells her to use one of the other bathrooms with a few choice words, and she scurries off with a quiet giggle, but sometimes there’s a pained groan, or a whimper, or a plaintive, ‘not really,’ and she has to remind him multiple times that on days like this, she really needs the door to be left unlocked. It takes a few years, but he eventually remembers that she can’t just kick the door in when he falls over or passes out.

(Not that it stops him from kicking the door in the moment she hisses after nicking herself shaving. He’s a very paranoid man, she’s learnt, and they have more bathroom doors for firewood than she’d like to admit.)

* * *

_2016_

Bruce is steadily working his way through a game of Sudoku in the paper, wrapped up tight in one of Clint’s zip-throughs and a blanket from the couch. For a while now, he’s been sipping at a mug of cocoa Laura made him, and they sit together quietly at the table as she feeds Nathaniel, testing him out on softer solids, and occasionally complaining that he’s too like his dad. Bruce, who has never known Clint as anything other than the exact opposite of a fussy eater, is surprised at this, and Laura takes some serious amount of glee in telling him all about Clint’s diet (or lack thereof) when they first met.

Clint comes down some ten minutes later, dressed in old, paint-stained jeans and a T-shirt that’s seen many better days than this one, still rubbing a towel through his hair and humming to himself. He ruffles Bruce’s hair as he passes, tugs Laura in by the belt loop for a kiss and drapes the towel over his shoulder as he goes about getting breakfast on the go.

‘If you have five minutes today,’ he says to his wife, putting a set of five bowls on the counter before going to the fridge, ‘do you think you could tidy me up a bit? I’m starting to get scruffy again.’

Laura winks at Bruce, and hums. ‘It’s far too late to tidy you up, honey,’ she says, and finishes rinsing Nathaniel’s bowl out. ‘But I’ll do my best.’

‘Now listen here,’ Clint starts, in his most over-exaggeratedly imperious tone, ‘I will have you know that I am _very_ tidy.’

Laura barks with laughter, and gives him a tap on the calf with her heel as he passes her. ‘You are the least tidy man I have ever known. Bruce, back me up. You’ve seen what he’s like.’

‘I’m not getting involved,’ he says, looks between the two of them, each giving him near-identical puppy eyes. ‘Stop looking at me like that.’

‘See? He agrees with me,’ Laura sniffs, and Clint flicks her ear. ‘That was just _rude_.’

Bruce can’t see Clint’s expression, because he has his back to him, but he can imagine the raised eyebrow, the easy grin. Clint, when he tries, can be very charming, and the way Laura blushes and looks away suggests the charm got ramped up all the way. There is something in the way she reacts to her husband’s charm, though, something so sweet and beautiful and for a second, he finds himself thinking of Betty, who had blushed and covered her face and shoved at his any time he’d tried to charm her. He misses her, but he thinks that this – whatever this is, with him and Nat and now the farm, the family he’s somehow gotten himself stuck with – is better for him.

Anything, he thinks, and fills in the last few numbers of the first box on the middle row, that makes him feel safe, makes him feel comfortable, is surely better for him. Even the – the – the _tension_ – between him and Nat, the awkward shuffle and come-and-go that they have going for them, even that is better than constantly looking over his shoulder. Clint is right in that no one knows where they are, no one knows they’re here, no one would think to look for the Hulk, or for Bruce Banner, here in this middle-of-nowhere farm.

It’s nice, feeling safe.

* * *

_1995_

Fury shows up at Laura’s door one Wednesday in August. She’s just got back from a jog with Lucky, and hasn’t finished chugging water (from Clint’s set of bottles, with their S.H.I.E.L.D. emblem and their teeth marks on the stopper) when the door opens.

‘I wasn’t expecting you!’ she calls, and spills water down her front when she forgets to lift the bottle. ‘Balls.’

But it’s not Clint that rounds the corner to find her in the kitchen. She tries to be decent and not judge people based on appearance alone but the guy is huge and in black leather (in August!) and she feels perfectly justified in screaming and throwing the water bottle at him. He catches it with the same ease Clint has, turns it so the sleek print catches the light, and hums.

‘I’d wondered where our stocks were,’ he says, in a broad, molasses and salted caramel accent, ‘perhaps we should change his codename to Magpie, since he steals everything not nailed down.’

Laura clutches her chest, runs her hands through her released ponytail, rubs her neck, and Lucky yips happily, bounding over to the man, who reaches down to rub his ear.

‘Can – can I help you?’ Laura asks. ‘I’m - I’m not sure who -’

‘My name is Nick Fury. I’m sure Barton’s complained about me.’

Clint has complained about Fury, of course he has, but Laura has no description of him to base this man on.

‘Prove it,’ she says, and backs into the counter, hand searching for something, anything. She comes up with the small knife she used this morning to cut a kiwi. Clint taught her that it would be long enough to make a cut deep enough to give her target enough trouble that she could get out.

Fury doesn’t look impressed at being questioned. Lucky jumps up to try and lick at his face, but Fury pushes him down, lone eye focused on Laura.

‘I don’t know how to prove it, Ms Harcourt,’ he says, ‘but I would appreciate it if you didn’t try and stab me with a paring knife. You could, but I don’t think Barton would appreciate coming home to find his girlfriend’s arm in a splint.’

Laura clutches the knife tighter, and her hand comes too close to the blade, nicks the fat of a finger. Hissing, she drops the knife.

Fury approaches, palms open, and pulls her to the sink.

‘I understand why he wants to marry you now. Not a grain of self defence in your body, is there?’

‘Insulting me isn’t going to help,’ she snaps, and yanks her hand free. ‘I’ve lived alone since I was nineteen, so I think I know how to take care of a few minor scrapes, thank you.’

Fury does not seem any more impressed than he had a minute ago. Still, he lets her go and stays fussing the dog. Laura sticks a plaster to the cut and leans on the counter. As she looks across the apartment, it becomes obvious to anyone who knows Clint that he’s been here. His clothes are strewn across the floor, which is hardly an issue in a studio apartment when she has last week’s laundry still piled in the corner of the couch, underwear neatly folded at the top.

She’s mortified when she realises he left a strip of condoms on the table.

Fury is clearly used to worse and gracefully avoids the topic. He doesn’t sit down though. Laura doesn’t know if that’s more embarrassing. Clint would be disgustingly proud of himself, because he says it’s a real job, that. Getting under his boss’ skin. Anything, he would tell her often, would be enough.

He’ll never forgive her for managing it on her first attempt.

‘Um,’ she says, ‘are you – why are you here? If you don’t mind me asking.’

‘I wanted to be sure,’ Fury tells her, ‘of what Barton was doing. Or who, I should say.’

She flushes crimson, feels her hairline to her neckline burning lobster red.

‘And?’ she asks, feeling fear knot in her belly, because she’s heard stories of Fury, of what he can do.

She was sure, when Clint had painted her pictures of his boss, that he was over-exaggerating, that he was telling her lies to make everything he did seem cooler. That was then.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure he’s done better for himself than you have.’

Laura’s jaw tightens, her flush turning angry.

‘Excuse you?’ she asks. ‘You come into _my_ house, uninvited, and _insult_ me? Who do you think you _are_?’

Fury watches her, and her fists tighten. The plaster doesn’t stay stuck to her finger, and blood drips down her finger as it curls into her palm.

‘You think he’s not good to me?’ she demands, and strides the ten steps it takes to get toe-to-toe with him. ‘You think he’s not the best man I have ever met? You think he’s not good enough? Does he know you think so little of him, huh? Does he _know_ that you think I don’t deserve the happiness he brings when he walks through that door, looking like absolute hell on earth? I’m lucky if he makes it back on his feet without needing crutches. I’m lucky if I get to see him again. Every time he sets foot out that door, I am _terrified_ I won’t see him again. You think I’d stay with him, with this, if it wasn’t what I knew I wanted with every damn breath?’

She is a solid foot shorter than Fury, even pushing up onto the balls of her feet as she is. His eye, dark and tired and old, is implacable, but she meets it with fire in her own. A few deep breaths, and the anger abates just enough for her to take a step back, to unclench her fists, to consider.

‘Sorry,’ she says, licks her lips, looks everywhere but Fury. ‘I’m sorry. I – Get out of my house. Now. Please.’

The last is tacked on, an afterthought. There’s no please in her tone.

Fury gives her a last look before humming to himself.

‘He did good,’ he says, to himself, and gives Lucky’s ear a last rub before making for the door.

Laura stands there until she’s sure Fury is out of the building, then she’s rushing to the toilet and doubling over to throw up.

* * *

_1994_

It’s been raining all day, near enough, a heavy sheet of water that came out of absolutely nowhere. It had been forecast sunshine and temperatures well into the seventies, so Laura had dressed appropriately, in a nice, work-appropriate sundress, soft and delicate, all lace and chiffon and pastel colours, with matching handbag and cute little court shoes. Her hair had been up off her neck, and honestly, she’d been as close to at her best as she had been for months.

Of course it immediately began raining, then. The universe had long since conspired to never let Laura have anything.

(Clint was proof enough of that; how many hints did a girl have to give before a guy got the message? Did she have to strip off naked in his apartment and throw herself over his bed or something? You’d think he was blind, not deaf.)

Huffing out a heavy breath, she goes to the subway, not bothering to run, because she’s already soaked, and what use would it be to run in this kind of weather? And she won’t take a cab, because it’ll be twice as expensive in this weather, and honestly, she’s not a fan of cabs.

Because the universe is conspiring against her, there’s flooding on the line, and she’s forcibly ejected from the subway in Brooklyn. This wouldn’t have bothered her any, but there’s no way back into Manhattan now.

‘Balls,’ she sighs, and turns to go to a coffee shop.

If nothing else, she can wait out the storm and dry her hair with the hand dryer in the bathroom. By the time she finds one empty enough for her to have a table to herself – a miracle in and of itself, and maybe the universe doesn’t hate her _that_ much – she’s given up on ever being dry again. Everyone in the immediate vicinity has a full view of her underwear, and at least she wore nice underwear today, a set that matched and didn’t look old and faded, because a pale pink dress hides absolutely nothing once it’s plastered to your skin.

She orders cocoa, and a toasted sandwich, and goes to sit in the corner booth still free.

Ten minutes later, an equally-sodden Clint Barton walks through the door and comes straight for her. He looks like a drowned rat, but his abs, what of them she can see through the near see-through white T-shirt plastered to his skin, are more than enough to make up for it.

‘You,’ he accuses, and jabs a finger in her direction.

‘Me?’

He flops into the chair opposite her, and runs his hands through his hair. He’s just as wet as she is, more so, even, and she glances to the large window to see if Lucky’s there. He’s not, and she wonders if Clint left him at home.

‘He’s safe at home, don’t worry,’ he says, ‘I wouldn’t bring him out in this weather. Hell, if I didn’t have to be out in this weather, I’d still be at home. Good job I had to be out; what are you doing here, Laura?’

Something about the way he says her name makes her shiver, makes something burn and freeze in her gut all at once. He’s mad at her, mad at her being out here alone, mad at her being inappropriately dressed for the weather, mad that he had to come and retrieve her like some stray puppy.

‘The subway flooded,’ she says, and eagerly reaches for the cocoa being brought to her.

The waitress asks if Clint would like anything, and he asks for coffee, with creamer and no sugar. He then proceeds to steal half of Laura’s sandwich. She doesn’t have it in her to argue.

‘Why were you on the subway at all?’ he asks around a mouthful of ham and cheese, ‘you should have taken a cab home.’

‘I didn’t have that much cash on me,’ she shrugs, ‘and I figured the subway would be quicker. Manhattan is gridlocked right now.’

‘You’re in _Brooklyn_ ,’ he says, as though she doesn’t know, ‘you’re twice as far away from home as you were when you started.’

‘I’ll just wait out the storm.’

‘Here? The storm’s forecast to last well into the night. What are you going to do when this place closes for the night, eh?’

‘I’ll go hang out in a McDonalds or something.’

He gives her such a dirty look she almost feels guilty. He’s a very easily-stressed man, she’s learnt, and he very much likes her to stay safe and sound and having her wandering around in a thunderstorm is not something he likes the idea of very much.

Another rake of his hands through his hair, another sigh, another despairing look.

‘Look,’ he says, ‘come back to mine, just for the night. I’ll give you cab fare home in the morning when the rain’s let up and we can pretend this never happened.’

Her turn now to give him a dirty look.

‘Thanks,’ she says, and shoves what’s left of her sandwich away. ‘Thanks a lot.’

He looks confused, and asks what he did.

‘Don’t ask me home because you like me or anything. Just because I’m a chore or whatever. Part of some checklist for your good deeds of the day.’

Her voice is climbing, she knows, and the tables around them are looking away.

‘You aren’t a _chore_ ,’ he tells her, affronted. ‘God sake, Laura, you think I want you getting sick because you’re in my shitty apartment all night?’

Clint takes a breath, gives her an earnest look.

‘Listen,’ he says, as though _this_ is a huge chore. ‘I’d rather you were safe at home, in those awful bed socks of yours, with cocoa and action movies. You know that. But you aren’t going to be getting home tonight with the weather like this. So you’ll have to come home with me, and you know my apartment is nowhere near as good as yours for things like heating.’

Under her breath, she murmurs, ‘you’d be there.’

He looks stricken and flattered all at once.

* * *

_2014_

It’s almost one in the morning. Clint is sat on the couch, earbuds blaring Glen Campbell loud enough to be heard across the room, and he’s pulling his hair out. Bruce stands in the doorway to his bedroom for a second, cup in hand, and considers just going back to bed, but Clint is doing that thing where his leg is bouncing, and he’s grumbling to himself. After a moment, Bruce manages to make out very familiar words – mispronounced, and he tugs at his shirt before crossing to the couch.

He stands there and waits for Clint to notice him; if he’s got music playing that loudly, he’s not got his hearing aids in, so hearing him approach is out of the question, and Bruce values his hands too much to get them within breaking range of Clint in an attempt to get his attention physically. A minute passes, and then Clint’s throwing his textbook on the floor and shoving himself into the couch like a petulant teenager.

As he turns to change the song on his iPod, he finally notices Bruce and flinches.

‘Fuck me,’ he spits, and yanks the earbuds out, finding his hearing aids under a stack of papers and shoving them back in. Shaking his head out to get the audio back in sync or whatever it is that does, he looks up at Bruce again. ‘What are you doing standing there?’

‘You’re up late,’ Bruce says, choosing to not comment on how poking Clint to get his attention results in broken fingers. ‘What are you working on?’

Clint looks at him, and then tries to hide the pages of notes he’s made in his scrawling handwriting without making it obvious. Bruce recognises equations and a printout of the periodic table and chemical formulas.

‘Science?’ he asks, and carefully moves Clint’s stuff out of the way to take a seat, drink momentarily forgotten. ‘What’s this for? This is – this is high school level stuff, right?’

Clint gnaws at his cheek for a moment. ‘I’m doing night classes,’ he admits, ‘to get my diploma. I’m a dropout.’

Silence lingers long enough that Clint tells him to just laugh.

‘Go on, you know you want to.’

‘No, I don’t want to laugh, Clint, I’m not Tony. I think it’s great, that you’re doing this. This is wrong, though; you – you can’t make that with oxygen.’

Clint peers at it.

‘Hydrogen?’ he tries.

Bruce looks at him, and Clint offers him a shrug.

‘Okay,’ he says, nodding to himself and putting the papers down. ‘Okay. Give me your mug.’

Clint does so, and Bruce goes into the kitchen, mumbling to himself the whole way.

‘J.A.R.V.I.S.?’ Bruce asks, and the computer stirs, soundless.

‘Can I help?’

‘What basic lab tech have we got here, do you know?’

J.A.R.V.I.S. runs through his inventories and comes up blank.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘we stopped carrying basic equipment around the time Tony learnt how to use it properly.’

The jab makes him smile. ‘Thanks anyway.’

‘Was there anything else I could help you with?’

‘No, it’s okay. Thanks, J.A.R.V.I.S., I can make do.’

The computer shuts down again and Bruce takes fresh coffees through to the lounge where Clint is back to pulling his hair out over his notes.

‘No wonder you’re pulling your hair out,’ he says, handing the mug over before going to the textbook Clint had thrown across the room and picking it up to flick through. ‘Just drink your coffee, and I’ll go through this, and then we’ll start at the beginning, okay? Don’t stress. You’re talking to a professional.’

Clint looks at him like he looks at Tony when he suggests something very dangerous and probably very fun but something that they all know they’ll regret.

‘Don’t give me that look,’ Bruce hums, and gets to his feet. ‘Hold on, I’ll get my glasses. That would be a good start, ha-ha.’

Clint’s stare follows him all the way back to his bedroom, and Bruce returns a few moments later with his glasses and a sweater, taking a seat again and looking more than ready now. Clint curls up in the corner, legs folded up to form a support for his chin, and he stares at nothing as Bruce reads through the textbook.

‘Is this the core module?’ he asks once, and Clint gives an affirmative grunt. ‘Core textbook and everything?’

Another grunt has him falling silent, and Bruce considers what he’s looking at. He finds a scrap of paper from among Clint’s notes and a pen, and begins scribbling his own utterly indecipherable notes. They’re small and cramped and might as well be another language. Clint has no idea how people work like that. His letters are big and round and perfectly legible, when he tries to write, which he has to these days, because the kids can barely read their own writing, it’s cruel to add his to the mix. Laura has nice writing, he thinks, and feels his blood warm a little. Just the thought of her writing has him falling in love with her all over again, it’s quite sad really.

‘You look calmer,’ Bruce murmurs, glancing at him from the corner of his eye, ‘keep thinking of whatever that is. It’ll help. We’re going back to basics again.’

‘I did basics,’ Clint protests. ‘We did it in class.’

‘I don’t know who wasn’t paying attention, you or the teacher, but one of you is full of shit.’

Clint stares at him, and Bruce sets the textbook down, drains the last of his mug and it hits the table with a resolute clank.

‘Right,’ he says, ‘right, let’s go.’

They order pizza after the second hour, and tip handsomely for the three AM delivery to Avengers Tower, and Bruce devours his pizza almost as fast as Clint demolishes his. They have beers open on the table, but they’ve been going mostly ignored. Glen Campbell has been rejected in favour of Spotify, and Bruce occasionally gives Clint some side-eye for one song or another that doesn’t fit with the rest.

‘I spent a lot of time on the road,’ Clint shrugs, ‘not a lot to do on the road.’

Bruce does not think that adequately explains the _Lion King_ soundtrack, but it’s almost four in the morning and he’s trying to teach a grown man simple chemistry.

Clint, Bruce has learnt, is not a scientist. Science is not something he has an aptitude for, and he’s got a fantastic memory, sure, can recite the periodic table within the hour, and can name all the atomic numbers and classes and everything Bruce could ever want from him, but he can barely string together chemical equations.

He gets H2O and has no trouble with that, but anything more advanced and he just stares blankly.

‘Do you _have_ to do this science?’ Bruce asks.

‘Yes,’ Clint says, ‘I need a sixty-five on the exam to pass it.’

‘When’s the exam?’

‘June.’

It gives them a little over five months to get Clint up to standard, and Bruce has taught worse for less. Whatever Clint’s doing this for – because after three years, Bruce likes to think he knows Clint well enough to know that this diploma business is not for him, because Clint wears his achievements in spite of his lack of education proudly, so there’s no way he’s doing this out of a desire to have another useless scrap of paper – is important to him, to his very core, and to Bruce, that’s worth everything.

* * *

_2016_

Tony comes into the parking lot at such speed that he has to spin the car twice to get it to stop. Steve, who had been informed of Tony’s rapid approach, had stepped out to meet him, and almost got his toes run over for his trouble, but stands there with his arms folded waiting for Iron Man to get his act together.

‘Cap!’ he calls as he tumbles out of the driver’s seat and hurries around to the boot, popping it open and yanking out a pile of dossiers. ‘This is important, the utmost.’

Steve’s head cocks to the side, eyebrow raising. His folded arms tighten, briefly, before the tense shoulders relax and he rubs at an eye.

‘The utmost importance,’ he repeats, in that resigned tone that seems to be reserved solely for Tony Stark and his grand, important, vital ideas.

‘Absolutely,’ Tony nods, and shoves a pile of manila folders and booklets and God-knows-what into Steve’s unprepared arms before going back to the car and getting another stack of equal size.

‘Tony, what the _hell_?’ Steve asks.

‘Language,’ Tony sing-songs back, and leads him – him! The technical owner of the building! The cheek of it! – through to the offices. ‘Where’s Wanda? I need Wanda too.’

Steve stops at a communication point and elbows the speaker on. ‘Wanda?’ he asks, ‘can you come down to the office? ASAP, please.’

He lets go of the speaker and they carry on. Wanda meets them at the office a few minutes later, and Steve has his head in his hands.

‘I’m glad to see you’ve finally gotten over your issues,’ she says by way of greeting, and picks up a magazine. ‘Who’s wearing the dress?’

Steve gives her a filthy, but very much despairing, look. ‘Tony, tell her.’

‘I am arranging a wedding,’ he says.

Wanda helps herself to a seat. ‘I can see that. I’m holding a bride magazine.’

She looks at Steve, who has not quite reached the point of getting his head out of his hands.

‘Ah,’ Tony says, waggling his finger like she’s missed the most important detail and he’s going to chastise her for it, and she considers reaching across the table and snapping his finger off. ‘But it’s _who_ the wedding is for that is the important part, and why I need your help.’

‘Tony,’ Steve groans, ‘stop being an ass.’

‘All _right_ ,’ Tony huffs. ‘It came to my attention via your boyfriend – sweet, by the way, how he asked Barton for permission, that’s adorable – that it is coming up to the Bartons’ fifteenth anniversary, and I, for one, am not about to celebrate the occasion by buying them a crystal vase, what a waste of money.’

Steve looks like he’s about to mop up his tears of frustration with a pamphlet dedicated to the collection of crystal glass offered by a popular – and expensive – department store in New York.

‘Okay,’ Wanda starts, and then pauses. ‘Wait, who is my boyfriend?’

Tony forges on and ignores her.

‘So I thought, they never had a proper wedding, did they? I got the story out of Laura a few months ago, when I asked her about the rings again – did you know that Coulson picked them out? _Coulson_! I’m glad I was sat down when I found out about that one! I’m going to make Natasha mention it in her speech – and she told me that they went to a registry office and signed the paperwork, and the best of it all is that Barton, bless his heart, not only showed up late, but had a concussion and threw up on the registrar. Apparently, they’ve been bickering for the last fifteen years about whether or not he passed out, too. I’m tempted to put money on him fainting, but I’d never get a return, because he’ll never admit it.’

Wanda gawks at him. Steve finds a holiday brochure for Paris, puts it over his face and sits there. Tony doesn’t seem to notice either of them.

‘So I thought, as Barton letting us into his life at the farm and all that saved our asses against Ultron, which, really, it did, didn’t it? What would we have done otherwise, you know? So I thought, why not, as it’s coming up to his wedding anniversary, why not give them the wedding they never got the first time around?’

They sit in silence for maybe twenty seconds. On the twenty-first second, Steve peels the brochure away from his face and looks Tony in the eye.

‘The farm is still a secret from everybody,’ he says. ‘Clint doesn’t want anybody poking their noses into his personal life, and I know you, Tony. If you plan a wedding, every major news station in the country is going to be there running a commentary on what shoes everybody’s wearing and who made the cake and all this nonsense. You’ll jeopardise the Bartons’ safety, and he’ll never forgive you.’

‘He?’ Wanda scoffs. ‘He? I’ll never forgive him if he puts them in danger. He knows that.’

Tony pulls a face, like they’re being ridiculous.

‘Of course it won’t be _public_!’ he tells them. ‘You think I’m that mad? I mean, I’ve a few not-so-brilliant ideas in my life, but I know what I’m doing. No, no, don’t worry, we’ll have it at the farm. I’m pretty sure I can get someone ordained as a priest. Thor can officiate a marriage, can’t he? It’s not like they’re _actually_ getting married. It’s more like a vow renewal. Laura says Clint’s vows were rather touching.’

Steve has seen the way Laura looks at her husband, and the way her husband looks at her. He can imagine how “touching” Clint’s vows were.

‘This is one of the worst ideas you’ve ever had,’ he tells Tony.

Tony looks at him. ‘There won’t be any robots, so it can’t be that bad.’

Steve gets to his feet and leaves the room in utter silence.

* * *

_1994_

Lucky comes bounding out of the bedroom the moment he hears the door, and almost barrels Laura over in his eagerness to jump up and lick her face. Clint manages to grab his collar and hold him steady before he does, and Laura laughs.

‘Hello, my sweet pecan pie,’ she coos, and doubles down to give him a good rub across the neck and shoulders, ‘did you miss me?’

He barks and licks her face, and she laughs, presses a kiss to his muzzle.

‘Good dog,’ she tells him, and glances up at Clint, who is slowly letting go of the collar and straightening up. ‘So, um. What’s the, uh. Plan?’

Clint blinks at her, eyes tightening in confusion for half a second. ‘Oh, right. Okay. We need to get you dried off, first of all, before you catch a cold. Then – coffee?’

She smiles, gives Lucky a last rub to the ear before getting back to her feet, taking her shoes off as she does. ‘You gonna help me with that?’

He goes lobster red and stumbles back a couple of steps.

‘Ha-ha-ha, no, sweetheart. No. Um. I think you can handle it.’

 She watches him closely, watches him try very, very hard to not look down the front of her dress. He mostly succeeds, but he can’t meet her eyes, and that’s adorable, truly. Honestly, the very idea that he’s even remotely intimidated by her and her hundred-and-ten pounds, that he can’t look her in the eye, it’s adorable.

‘That’s a shame,’ she hums, and dusts herself down. ‘You’ve got warm hands.’

He laughs, runs his hands through his hair. ‘Please just go get dried off.’

It’s cruel, she thinks, to tease him, like that, so she lets up, offers him a sweet, gentle smile, and heads through to the bathroom. She glances back when she shuts the door, and Clint has his hands over his mouth, still lobster red.

His bathroom is as steamy and damp as ever, warm with towels on the floor and slung over the edge of the tub. She wipes down the mirror and snorts at the streaked makeup, turning the tap on to wash it off as best she can. She’ll have panda eyes in the morning, but at least he doesn’t have white sheets. It doesn’t take her long to dry off, hanging her dress and underwear over the radiator to dry, and she wraps the towel around her before going back to the door.

‘Clint?’ she calls, and cracks the door open to peer around. ‘Have you got something I can wear?’

He appears in the doorway to the bedroom, shirt in hand, and she gives him a beaming smile.

‘That for me?’ she asks, and he swallows audibly, crosses the room to hand it over.

‘Here,’ he says, shoves it at her, ‘I’ll, um. Get the coffee on the go.’

‘Alright,’ she says, and if she leaves the door open when she puts the shirt on, well, that’s not her fault.

Clint glances back when he doesn’t hear the door shut, and he’s been a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent for almost two years now, and he’s able to stand tall against rival agents flirting and trying to get in his pants. God knows, he’s had enough missions where he’s had to flirt his way up the ladder to get to a target, and he’s done it better than most agents, but this.

Well, _her_.

She hasn’t shut the door, and she’s just in view when she drops the towel, and he can see her freckles from here, traces them down her spine. He tries very hard (and mostly fails) to not look at her backside, and wheels around to pad into the kitchen, rearranging himself as he goes.

 A deep breath or three later, he’s got the coffee on the go, and he’s mostly got his libido under control. Laura almost manages to sneak up on him; bare feet are very good for sneaking on his carpet, but he’s too well-trained to not hear her, and she props her hip against the counter.

‘Thanks,’ she starts, running a hand through her hair. ‘For the shirt.’

She’s gorgeous like this, he thinks, without makeup with towel-dried hair and just his shirt. His heart hammers against his ribs, and he takes another deep breath or two, moves to get a couple of mugs off of the shelf.

‘You’re welcome,’ he says, and meets her smile with one of his own.


	8. Daddyhawk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some implied sexual content, and minor violence

_1994_

Considering that Clint is more comfortable curling up into a corner of the couch than he is lying on it, he sleeps so untidily, with limbs everywhere and blankets twisted.

Laura wakes under one of his legs and her head on his arm. It’s uncomfortably warm and hairy, but there’s nowhere else she wants to be. Clint doesn’t snore or talk, so she sleeps soundly whenever he’s stayed over.

‘Are you awake?’ She whispers, but he doesn’t so much as flinch. ‘Clint?’

He’s breathing, of course, and his heart thumps slow and visible against his chest. But there’s no sign of reaction at all.

She waits, but he remains fast asleep. Tracing his scars and bruises and muscles can only entertain for so long, so she wriggles out from under his leg and heads to the bathroom. When she returns, there’s no indicator the he’s going to wake any time soon.

‘Clint? Are you awake yet?’

No answer.

‘God, you aren’t in a coma or something, are you? Just my luck, a total hottie comes into my life and I fuck him into a coma.’

He snorts and rolls over, but doesn’t even flutter his eyelashes. She’s starting to get worried, because he’s never done this before, and she hesitates before climbing onto the bed and shaking his shoulder.

He snaps awake with a startled yell, and looks baffled for a few seconds before locking gazes and registering that she’s there.

‘Oh,’ he says, like he’s forgotten how to use an indoor voice. ‘Laura. Hey. Morning.’

‘Hey,’ she replies a grin. ‘You had me worried for a minute there, honey!’

He watches her mouth, and then shakes his head. ‘Can’t hear you, sweetheart.’

‘Can’t hear?’

He gives her a droll look.

‘I’m deaf. Mostly. My hearing aids are breaking. Broken. They’re shit.’

She looks at his ears; there’s no sign of an aid.

‘There’s nothing there,’ she tells him, and he stares blankly.

‘What?’

Slowly, loudly, she says, ‘I can’t see any hearing aids.’

He takes a moment to digest this, maybe make sense of it, and then tells her to hold on, and it takes him a minute to find the tag, but then he’s tugging the hearing aids out, and he’s got two tiny, pill-like things in his palm. She’d gotten a notepad and a pen in the interim and writes, THOSE are hearing aids?!????!! before underlining it three times and shoving it in his face.

He grins, so proud of himself.

‘Yeah!’ he says, pushes them around his palm with a finger. ‘Yeah, my han – this guy I work with, he had the lab rats make me some. The ones I had when I started work, they went over the ear? They got knocked about a lot. Broke easily. These ones don’t, ‘cause they’re in the canal, you know?’

Laura looks at them, and looks at Clint’s ears. Then she looks at the pad of paper in her lap and writes, don’t you get a lot of ear infections with them though?

Clint flushes. ‘Sometimes,’ he admits, and shoves them back in. Laura suspects that that’s why he gets ear infections, and wonders if she should tell him.

She decides not to.

You worried me, she writes, I thought you were in a coma!

He laughs, flops back on the bed, and laughs some more.

‘You’re great,’ he tells her, and reaches for her hand.

She drops the notebook on the floor and lets him tug her in.

* * *

_2014_

It takes Clint a while to adjust to the Avengers. The way he understands it, he was not initially part of the Initiative, he was just collateral damage. He was compromised, and he was there when the fighting began – his part in the fighting _beginning_ is not lost on him, and if Fury calls him into his office, he will sit there quietly and listen to what Fury has to say, because Clint is self-aware enough to know that he fucked this up big time – and he’d been expected to stay behind, hadn’t he? It was only when he _asked_ to come, when he demanded that he take his place in the fight to undo what he had a hand in starting, that he was considered.

Even then, he wasn’t really part of the team. Flying solo was his style anyway, working alone within the team. He was good in a fight, undoubtedly, had saved enough asses at S.H.I.E.L.D. to warrant his clearance level, his pay-grade, but he worked best on his own at a distance. It kind of came with the territory. You weren’t exactly a close-quarters guy when your primary weapon was a bow.

But, honestly? It wasn’t the whole fighting thing that was the problem. It wasn’t the lack of trust, the lack of that “click” that Coulson always preached. It wasn’t any of that.

Clint’s in no way stupid, since he beat out Fury and Selvig on the Tesseract being a door, but he’s like a fucking _moron_ around these guys. Even Nat can keep up with them, if not match their stride. Clint just sort of tags along behind in the conversations about science and technology and biology.

‘Tell me what to shoot,’ he says, by way of contribution, ‘and I’ll shoot it.’

Just don’t ask for his opinion. Not that they do anyway.

‘Don’t be too hard on yourself,’ Nat says one evening, Bruce and Tony engaged very, _very_ heavily in some technical planning for some raid on a suspected HYDRA base. ‘Cap doesn’t get it much either.’

‘Cap gets it,’ Clint assures her, ‘watch his eyes. He’s taking it all in, and he’s got stuff from the last base he learnt. He knows.’

She looks at him, lips twisted in that way she twists them when she thinks he’s full of shit, and he nudges her back towards the table with a foot.

‘Go,’ he says, ‘join in the discussion. Plan guard route take-downs.’

When he gets to his feet, Bruce looks up, but Nat touches his hand, asks him a question, and his attention is diverted. Clint escapes out into the corridor, clambers up the stairs up onto the roof and sits there with his phone held to his ear.

‘Hello,’ Laura coos, smile obvious on the curl of the last syllable. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to call.’

‘I wasn’t expecting to either,’ Clint says, leans against the wall. The roof isn’t the safest place for him to be, not really, but there’s good cell reception, and he has a nice view of the city up here. ‘It’s just a bit. Much. You know?’

Laura does know, and assures him of such.

‘You’re not there to talk physics and engineering and biology with them,’ Laura tells him, and Clint knows from the rustle that she’s settled in bed. He feels guilty for calling her this late, but doesn’t consider hanging up. ‘You’re there to keep them from killing each other. To keep them safe. You aren’t book-smart like they are, Clint. You’re _people_ -smart.’

He scoffs. ‘It doesn’t feel like it some days.’

She chuckles, that sleepy chuckle he loves more than air, and she tells him to not be ridiculous.

‘You know them, honey. You understand people. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again until you get it; they need you. They need you far more than you need them. Superpowers are all well and good, but you ground them. Remind them that they’re _not_ all the things the media says. Sure, they’re heroes. So are you. So are the police that were on the ground that day. So are the nurses who worked triple shifts to make sure the civilian casualties were as low as they could be. The builders and city planners and clean-up crews. They’re all heroes, you know? Just because Tony Stark flew into a space portal doesn’t make him any more a hero than the poor bastard that has to deliver our groceries. I still think we should get chickens by the way, since the eggs never survive.’

He laughs, barely more than a sigh, and she sighs in return.

‘Clint, honey,’ she breathes, ‘come home. If you don’t want to be there, don’t stay. Come home.’

‘I have to stay,’ he says, ‘we’ve got a raid soon. On another base. We think it’s HYDRA. Or some off-shoot of HYDRA. Could be something else entirely. Probably trying to make the serum.’

‘They’re always trying to make the serum,’ Laura sighs. ‘Where are you?’

‘On the roof,’ Clint grins, ‘not really the place. That bad, huh?’

‘Absolutely _awful_ ,’ she says, ‘you’re never normally gone so long.’

‘It’s because you’ve got that screenshot,’ Clint teases, ‘I told Maria not to send you anything, but you know how she is. She thought it was hilarious that there was a perfect screenshot of my ass.’

‘It’s a very nice ass,’ Laura defends. ‘I like looking at it.’

‘I don’t know why you need a screenshot from the Helicarrier when there’s a real – ‘

He cuts himself off, listens, and as the door onto the stairs creaks open, he whispers, ‘I gotta go,’ before hanging up and opening up a virtual pet app he downloaded the other week.

Habit, now, after that Tamagotchi Coulson bought him all those years ago finally wore down. He glances up when the door opens all the way, and he looks nonchalant when Bruce rounds the corner, peering down at him.

‘Clint?’ he asks, looks around as if to try and figure out why the archer’s holed himself up down the side of the ventilation unit. ‘Is everything – alright?’

‘Not really my scene,’ Clint shrugs, ‘you know? All the smart people talk. Not my thing. Tell me who to shoot, what to blow up. I’m fine with that.’

‘No you aren’t,’ Bruce replies, and Clint grunts, puts all of his attention into the virtual pet.

Bruce lingers for a few moments, and then takes the hint and disappears back inside without a word. Maybe he’ll tell Nat. Maybe Nat will sit on it for a few days before bringing it up out of nowhere when Clint has nowhere to run. Not that he runs. He just doesn’t like having these kind of discussions.

It’s not Nat who comes up to see him, though. It’s Cap.

‘Steven,’ Clint grunts, and Steve slowly sits opposite him. His back is exposed to the Manhattan skyline, but to be honest, Clint couldn’t feel safer.

‘Clint,’ the soldier replies with a genial nod. ‘Bruce said you weren’t yourself, and I’m inclined to agree.’

‘You barely know me.’

‘I know enough,’ Steve says with that little squint he has, when he’s assessing the situation. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

Steve, Clint thinks, wants to talk. The man that can’t articulate his emotions in any verbal way without having an aneurysm and brushes all attempts at talking about his feelings under the rug so far they come out the other side wants to _talk_. About _emotions_.

‘Absolutely not,’ Clint says. ‘I want to perch here until my ass goes numb and my battery dies, and I want to mope.’

Steve frowns at him. Clint ignores him until he goes away.

* * *

_1994_

There’s a moment, very early in the morning, between Clint waking up and him opening his eyes, where he forgets the difference between his bed and Laura’s, between his landline and hers, between the sound of the cars outside her apartment and his. They all blend together and in that moment, when the phone rings, he answers it.

‘Mm, morning,’ he says, because he thinks it’s his phone, and thereby expects it to be Laura, or Phil, or even Fury, all of whom know what he’s like first thing in the morning and they should all be grateful he answered the phone at all.

But this is Laura’s phone, and it isn’t Laura on the other end, because she is asleep next to him, in a T-shirt she stole from his drawer a month ago, and it isn’t Fury, because Fury has never rung Laura’s number, and he knows Phil is currently out in Peru doing some undercover thing, and why would he call from Peru unless something had gone very badly wrong?

‘Who the fuck is this?’ comes a voice he doesn’t recognise, and in another split-second, Clint is fully awake and kicking himself for answering Laura’s phone.

‘Um,’ he says. ‘It’s. It’s, uh. Laura’s. Um. I’m Laura’s boyfriend.’

The incoherent yelling is loud enough to wake Laura, and she slaps blindly at his chest, and gets a finger in his mouth before finding the phone and yanking it off him. She almost pulls the cradle with it, but Clint catches it before it falls, thankfully doesn’t hang up for her.

‘What do you want?’ she demands of the phone, and rolls over, sprawling out over Clint’s chest and while he appreciates having his half-naked girlfriend lying on him, he kind of wants to go and hide in the bathroom, or at least in the living room with the dog.

He pokes her in the belly, and she slaps his hand.

‘Jason,’ she snaps, clearly cutting into a diatribe from what Clint wagers is her brother, ‘listen to me. Jason. Hey, doofus, listen. Listen. I’m eighteen months younger than you, not eighteen years. I’m an adult.’

Clint is inclined to agree and nods. She pinches his ribs, continues to use him as a pillow, and listens to what Jason has to say. From the twist of her mouth, it’s nothing good.

‘And so what?’ she snorts. ‘What are you going to do about it? Yeah, he’s nicer than Michael was, he’s in – it’s none of your business, Jason! What is _wrong_ with you? You shouldn’t be asking your sister that! Oh my _God_ , Jace.’

Clint looks at her, and she looks at him, pulls a face.

‘I’m telling him what you just said,’ she tells the phone, and then, very clearly, surely so that Jason cannot be in any doubt, she tells her boyfriend that her brother is asking about their sex life.

* * *

_1997_

 Bunny is watching a re-run of a _Jeopardy!_ episode when there’s a sudden knock at the door. She wasn’t expecting visitors – her children, grown now, with children of their own and lives several states away, never come and visit, and her friends prefer meeting at prearranged times – so the knock bothers her. It bothers her a lot, but she goes to answer the door anyway.

It’s that nice young man who was bleeding in the foyer last week.

‘Hi,’ he says, and there’s a plaster on his nose, but otherwise, he looks a lot better. He shoves a bouquet of flowers in her direction. ‘I got these for you. As thanks, for helping me last week.’

Clint, she remembers, that’s his name, and carefully takes the bouquet from him. There’s no way he chose it, she thinks, looking at the lilies and roses and chrysanthemums arranged beautifully, in the prettiest shades of pink and cream. There’s absolutely no way he picked it himself. Laura, the girl from the fourth floor, she must have helped.

‘Thank you,’ she says, and looks up at him. ‘They’re beautiful.’

He beams, eyes crinkling wonderfully, and she smiles back.

‘Good,’ he says, and rubs the back of his head, ‘I’m glad you like them. But really – thank you for helping me. I’d – I was in a bad way that night, and it – it means a lot that you helped me, even though I was. Well. Bleeding everywhere, you know?’

‘It’s fine,’ Bunny assures him, and reaches out to rest a hand on his forearm, warm with the summer heat and solid muscle under his skin. She can’t stop herself from squeezing a little, just to see how much muscle it is. ‘Honestly, Clint, it’s fine. I’m glad you’re alright now. Your girl must take good care of you.’

His cheeks mottle red, and his gaze shoots to the wall.

‘Yeah,’ he stammers, and the embarrassment is adorable. ‘Yeah, she takes real good care of me. Someone’s got to, ha-ha.’

She imagines there have been more injuries, many, many more injuries, and she steps aside.

‘Would you like to come in? I’m watching _Jeopardy!_ if you’re interested.’

Clint considers for a second, and then nods. ‘Of course,’ he says, ‘I always watch it at home.’

Bunny goes to get a vase for the flowers – which are, genuinely, some of the most beautiful she’s seen – and Clint takes a seat on the couch. At the next commercial break, he glances at her.

‘Hey,’ he starts, ‘me and Laura, my girl, we were talking, and we – if you need anything – anything at all! – groceries or cleaning or anything like that, you just ask us, yeah? Laura’s here almost every night, and I try and stop by at least once or twice a week, when I’m here. Bit hard to stop by when you’re out of town, but when I’m here, I do my best. So I’ll be around for anything you need fixing up or anything.’

Bunny watches him and his blush slowly comes back.

‘Too much?’ he asks.

She laughs and pats his shoulder.

‘You’re a good boy,’ she says, ‘you don’t have to go out of your way to help a little old lady. You focus on your girl. I’ll be alright. I’m seventy-eight, that doesn’t make me an invalid.’

 Clint frowns at her. ‘Listen,’ he starts, and she raises an eyebrow. He can’t be a day over twenty-five, but here he is, trying to boss her around. ‘I can see that kitchen floor from here, it’s warped to all shit – excuse the language. I’ll stop by next week and relay it for you, alright? I’ll tell Laura to pick you up groceries every other day, and you can’t stop us.’

‘I could not open the door,’ she says.

‘It’s a tumbler lock,’ he replies, ‘I’ve broken into Laura’s apartment half a dozen times this month alone.’

‘I could call the police,’ she informs him, with a raised chin.

He gives her a droll look that she returns with arched eyebrows.

‘Go ahead,’ he shrugs, and returns to watching _Jeopardy!_.

‘I’ll put the chain across,’ she sniffs, ‘and then what? Your plan is _foiled_.’

He laughs, and stays for the next three episodes of the game show too.

* * *

_1996_

Clint’s been in Sweden – it was Sweden, right? Either way, it was somewhere cold – for a week or so, and even though she’s sure he’s been back in the States for at least twenty-four hours, he’s still cold. Every part of him is cold, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if there was still snow in his hair.

‘You’re cold,’ she tells him, and yelps when he slips his hands under her T-shirt. ‘Put some gloves on!’

‘Can’t you warm me up?’ he asks, in _that_ voice.

She purses her lips at him, because he knows damn well that she can’t resist that voice, knows damn well what it does to her. She’ll pretend that she shivers because his fingers are brushing her ticklish belly, and they’re cold fingers too. That’s what’s doing it. Not the bedroom eyes and the soft voice. Nope. Just the ticklish touch to her belly. That’s all.

‘You know,’ he murmurs, having the audacity to look sheepish, like a schoolboy telling secrets, ‘they taught me some stuff in Basic Training. About keeping warm.’

His fingers play with the button of her shorts and she hums.

‘Yes,’ she agrees, blasé as she can be, ‘I’m sure they did.’

‘Mm-hm. There’s lots of ways. Fires and stuff. But I liked sharing body heat most. That sounded fun to me.’

‘I always knew you had a thing with Phil,’ she hums, and laughs when he pinches at her hip.

‘Laura,’ Clint whines, tugs at the waistband of her shorts to pull her flush against him, and she laughs louder, reaches up to loop her arms around his neck.

‘Use your words, honey,’ she coos, runs her hands down his neck and over his shoulders. ‘I’m not going to say yes until you say it.’

He gives her a look, and she raises her eyebrow again until he flushes a pretty shade of red. It’s nice to see a bit of colour in him.

‘You know,’ she says, ‘my mom gave me some great advice when her and dad divorced. She said that if you can’t buy condoms without making a fuss, you aren’t ready to have sex. I think I should make a rule for you that if you can’t ask for it with words, you shouldn’t be allowed.’

His fingers curl, cat-like, against her hips, nails digging just enough, and she laughs at the attempt to warn her.

‘You’re not saying it either,’ he tells her, and she nods.

‘I know,’ she agrees, ‘but I'm not the one trying to ask for it.’

He supposes that’s true, but he’s not going to admit it.

‘I just wanted to make it fun,’ he grumbles, head ducking down to press kisses against her neck. His ear is burning hot against her jaw, and she hums. ‘Not just ask outright like some kind of asshole.’

‘Never stopped you before,’ she teases. ‘Say it, Clint. I’ll say yes, you know that.’

 For a second, as he pulls away to look at her, he doesn’t look like he’s almost twenty-five, like they’ve been together months, like they’ve done this a hundred times. He looks like a scared boy, barely in his teens, like he’s facing down the devil. But then that boy is gone, lost under the easy grin and bright eyes of a man who knows what he wants.

‘I would like very much to have sex,’ he tells her, leaning in to whisper in her ear, and she smiles against his jaw.

‘Yes, honey,’ she coos, already getting her hands under his T-shirt to get it up and over his head. ‘Of course. You just had to say.’

‘I did say,’ he tells her, helps her get the T-shirt off, working on her shorts as she tosses it to the couch, ‘I used my words.’

‘You did,’ she agrees, braces herself on his shoulder to step out of her shorts and kick them in the same direction. ‘I’m very proud.’

He’s long since learnt to not trust her to walk, and lifts her by the thighs. Her ankles hook behind his hips, and he makes for the bed, though he has to stop once because she’s kissing at that spot on his neck where it joins his shoulder that she knows makes him positively _weak_. It’s a cruel trick, she knows, but he wobbles, has to brace himself on the shelving unit blocking her bed from the rest of the apartment, and it makes her laugh, triumphant.

‘Yes, yes,’ he huffs, but there’s a grin on his face, laughter shivering under his skin, ‘almost get us killed, what fun.’

‘The most fun,’ she agrees, squeezes her legs and kisses his nose. ‘Come on, Hawk, show me what you’ve got.’

* * *

_1995_

‘I hate him,’ Sitwell says once, and Coulson, who is busy idling over what his choice in mid-long-drive-snack is going to be, glances up at him.

‘Who? The list is quite long.’

Sitwell is glaring over the low top of the aisle to the counter, where Barton is shamelessly flirting with the pretty young cashier. She’s a sweet girl, Coulson thinks as he turns back to his decision between two brands of potato chips and a new type of cake that he’s never seen before, in her twenties perhaps, with dark hair tossed messily over her shoulder. Barton’s flirting has never been much of an issue in Coulson’s book, since he only flirts at times like this, when they’re at the gas station and are taking five minutes to stretch their legs, or they’re doing recon at some innocuous place mostly un-associated with their missions. He’s only flirting because he can’t flirt with his girlfriend, and Coulson knows he’s mostly just trying out awful one-liners and body-language techniques he’s picked up over the course of a few missions to make sure they aren’t as bad as he thinks they are.

They always are, but Laura assures her boyfriend’s handler that his inability to flirt like a normal human being is part of his charm.

So Coulson lets him flirt, because it puts Clint in a good mood, and brightens some girl’s day, and then he doesn’t have to confiscate all forms of communication from his archer, and all around it is a very good idea to let him do it.

‘I’ve no idea why,’ Coulson hums, and reads the back of one of the chip bags. ‘He’s a nice guy.’

‘Too nice. Look at him, Coulson, and actually _look_ this time, don’t just hum at me. He’s jeopardising the mission.’

‘He’s doing no such thing,’ Coulson sniffs, absolutely not looking. ‘He’s sat on the counter telling the cashier she’s got pretty eyes or hands or that her hair is nice. We’re still fifty miles out of the mission borderline, and she’s not going to remember what he looks like, just that he was nice and flirted with her. That’s what’s so good about him, you see. He blends in with so many other physically fit and conventionally attractive men in their twenties. You’re younger than him, you should know that.’

‘I am not younger than him.’

‘I’m not going to argue about it,’ Coulson hums, and settles on the one bag of chips, but also decides to splash out and try this new cake. If he doesn’t like it, he has backup. ‘Have a little faith in him, Agent Sitwell.’

Barton says that the reason Sitwell has such a sore spot is because though he’s been there longer, Barton now outranks him, and Coulson takes point on all missions together as the senior Agent. Coulson has no problems with giving up point on a mission, but he’s not a hundred percent on Sitwell’s decision-making under pressure, and Barton refuses to follow anyone else’s orders the way he follows Coulson’s.

(This is a slight over-exaggeration; Barton will follow Fury’s orders to his grave, but as far as anyone else goes, at the moment, the only orders he follows are Coulson’s. Hand tried to boss him around in a training exercise, and he deliberately set the sprinklers off and almost broke his ankle refusing to follow her instruction. She very quickly made an addendum in his file to state he wasn’t to work with anyone else if Coulson wasn’t on point until further notice.)

So, for now, Sitwell grumbles and whines and complains any time he has to work with the Coulson-Barton duo, and honestly, Coulson is getting tired of said whining, but he puts up with it, because they don’t have to work with Sitwell often, and he’s mostly stopped trying to be friendly with Clint, which is more of a godsend than anything else. Maybe one day, they’ll grow up, and Coulson is reminded, quite poignantly as he approaches the counter and Clint immediately drags him into the conversation by way of asking for his support in an assessment of the cashier’s hair colour and how nice it is, that he is almost thirty-five.

* * *

_2016_

There is nothing like plugging your hearing aids in of a morning and hearing four of your five children caterwauling to the tune of a nineties cartoon. Clint takes his hearing aids out and lies back down, deciding he needs five more minutes before he’s ready to go downstairs. Those five minutes pass quickly enough, because Laura’s done in the bathroom, and he can’t hear her enter, but after twenty-one years, his body is naturally attuned to hers, and he can almost feel his cells buzz with the force of her nearby.

So he rolls over and admires her as she gets dressed, giving her a (he hopes) gentle whistle.

She signs at him to not whistle so loud, the dog’s barking like mad. Whoops.

Wincing, he rolls back over to get his hearing aids. The nestlings have stopped singing, that’s something.

‘Morning, honey,’ he says, and scrambles to the end of the bed to get a few kisses from her.

‘Morning,’ she replies, grinning against his mouth, ‘go brush your teeth and get back to me on those kisses.’

He pulls a face, but she shoves at it with a palm and he sprawls back over the bed.

‘Meanie,’ he teases, as she goes to rifle through a drawer for the cardigan she wants.

‘I am not mean,’ she replies, and tosses a pair of his boxers over to him while she’s in the walk-in. ‘I am just not a big fan of your morning breath. I hate to break it to you, Clint, but you have the worst morning breath, and I’ve seen what Tony calls a diet.’

 He stretches idle, a half-hearted bridge, and she’s so tempted to tickle his exposed ribs, she is sorely tempted, and chuckles.

‘You waited twenty years to tell me that?’ he asks, ‘now _that’s_ mean.’

‘You’re normally up before me, so I don’t notice,’ she says, ‘but sometimes I beat you out of bed. Haven’t a clue why, I deserve lie-ins.’

‘You do,’ he agrees, and rolls off the bed and onto his feet.

* * *

_1998_

‘Do you trust me?’

He asks that a lot, Natasha thinks, and rubs at her wrist. He asks and asks and asks, unfaltering, like everything else. He clearly, after half a dozen times of asking her, doesn’t expect her to say yes. He’d probably be fine if she never said yes. He doesn’t want her to lie to him, but he wants her to trust that when he says he’ll stay, he means it. He’s been away from base two, maybe three times, she thinks. He tries to see her every day, always forewarns her when he can that he won’t be around. He has to work.

‘No,’ she says, and scratches at a scab. ‘I don’t trust you.’

He nods, and carries on with what he was doing before he asked. Paperwork of some sort. His letters are scratchy and malformed, like he’s not used to holding a pen for long periods of time.

For a while, they sit there in silence, and Natasha eventually begins to wonder when he’s going to leave. He’s been here for most of the day, appearing in the morning with a stack of manila folders and a pen behind his ear, bringing her a milkshake from some off-base location she forgets the name of, and leaves twice – once, she thinks, to go to the bathroom, and the second was to get lunch – but otherwise stays at the desk doing something she’s sure is very important and she shouldn’t be seeing.

But he sits there, and doesn’t hide his work from her. It makes her want to see it less, and she stays on her cot reading a book Fury gave her.

‘Don’t you have to go to bed?’ she asks him. ‘It’s late.’

He hums. ‘Probably,’ he agrees, and finishes the page he’s working on. ‘But it depends on whether you’re going to bed.’

She considers it. It’s not been a long day, because she’s done nothing, but she’s getting lazy and tired from inactivity. Maybe tomorrow, she’ll make Clint take her to the training room. He likes working out, and he laughs a lot when she’s with him, dancing around him and throwing him across the room. He’s mostly gotten her to stop biting, and she likes hearing him laugh.

‘Probably,’ she echoes. ‘In a short while. When I have finished this chapter.’

It doesn’t take her long to finish reading, and she closes the book with a snap.

While she’s readying for bed, Clint goes to hand the paperwork in, and when he comes back, she’s rifling through the mess on her shelf for the handcuffs she had to beg Fury to get her.

‘Clint,’ she says, and he kicks his shoes off. ‘I can’t find my cuff. Clint, where is it? Did they take it? Why would they take it? Is this a test? Haven’t they tested enough?’

He reaches up to tug her down from the cot, and once her feet are on the floor he cups her face.

‘Do you trust me?’ he asks.

‘No,’ she replies, without hesitation, because she absolutely doesn’t trust him right now.

‘Good. I took the handcuffs. Coulson has them right now, he’s going to give them to Fury; you’ll get them back in the morning.’

‘Why?’ she spits, and he catches her wrists when she lunges for him. ‘Why would you do that? I can’t sleep without it.’

‘You can,’ he assures her, and lets go of her wrists to cup her face again. His hands are warm and smell of soap and rest perfectly against the curve of her jaw.

She takes a shaky breath. ‘I can’t.’

He smiles. ‘You can. I’m going to be your cuff.’

She jerks back out of his hands. ‘What? What does that mean?’

‘I’m going to stay here tonight,’ he tells her, and guides her back to the cot. ‘I’m going to stay, and act as a cuff. You can’t stay handcuffed to your bed for the rest of your life. It has to start somewhere.’

‘You can’t just _take it away_ ,’ she tells him, and he pushes her shoulders. She flops to sit on the cot and glares up at him. ‘You can’t do this to me.’

‘Already did,’ he says, and tells her to budge over. ‘Not really designed for two people, but I’ve slept in worse places.’

‘I could kill you in your sleep,’ she tells him, but finds herself moving over, towards the wall, giving him space to lie down next to her. ‘I could kill you, take your badge and leave. You wouldn’t be able to stop me, because I’m not cuffed to the bed.’

He nods. ‘I know. But I know you won’t do that.’

After arranging herself to try and get comfortable without her arm over her head, he takes her wrist, and wraps his hand around it, not tight enough to cut off the circulation, but tight enough that she can’t just slip free.

‘How can you be sure?’ she asks, and watches his face.

His eyes are shut, his face relaxed, like he’s about to go to sleep. She doesn’t believe it for a second.

‘I trust you,’ he tells her, as though it’s that simple.

‘What?’ she gasps, but he doesn’t answer her.

The way he’s got her wrist held puts her hand over his heart, and she twists it to press it flat, feels the steady beat beneath her fingers, and wriggles to fit beside him. She’s not that small, not for a teenager, but he’s just big enough that she has to curl on her side, rather than lie on her back. She tucks her free arm under her head, watches his profile.

‘Stop staring,’ he tells her after a few minutes, and squeezes her wrist. ‘Go to sleep, Nat. I’ll take you to training tomorrow. You can beat me up then.’

 She laughs, and presses her hand a little. His heart thumps back, but of course it does, why wouldn’t it? It’s a heart, it has to beat.

‘Maybe I will,’ she whispers, and closes her eyes.

‘Good girl,’ he sighs, but doesn’t say anything else.

She falls asleep without realising sometime late in the night, after Clint’s dozed off, around the time she starts toying with the idea of pulling out of his grip. Even though he’s asleep – not deeply asleep, but asleep nonetheless – enough that she could break his fingers and get out before he had time to react, she finds her eyes getting gritty, and before she makes her mind up, it’s early in the morning, she’s jerking awake with Clint’s hand still around her wrist. Her arm’s the same kind of sore she normally has, so she has no doubt that he’d held it all night, and when she glances up at his face, he’s watching her.

‘Morning,’ he says, with that sleep-croaky morning voice she’s gotten used to. ‘How do you feel? Well-rested? Still want to punch my lights out?’

She considers, and he slowly lets go of her wrist.

As he’s tugging his shoes back on, she finally decides that she doesn’t want to punch his lights out, but would still like to train, and tells him as such.

‘Alright,’ he says, ‘I need to go do my morning routine, you need to do yours, be back in an hour or so?’

She nods, and he goes to the door to swipe his card.

‘Clint?’

He glances back over his shoulder.

‘Don’t do that again.’

He smiles.

‘Don’t you trust me?’ he asks, and the door swings open to let him out.

* * *

_2014_

Because he’s been off doing Avenging and whatnot for the past several months, he’s not had much time to spend with his children. Steve’s been working them all like dogs, determined to track down HYDRA, determined, Clint is sure, to find Bucky too, but he is _exhausted_ by the time he manages to steal away for a weekend with the promise that as soon as Steve called, he’d be coming straight back. He takes a bike home, because the bike is smaller and lighter and most importantly _faster_ , and he’s practically throwing it down across the path.

Lila is the first to round the house at the sound of the engine; Clint, now that Coulson is – well Clint was _sure_ that Coulson was dead, but he was also sure he passed him in the corridor once, but that had been in the first week of being back after his Leave of Absence, and he’d convinced himself he’d imagined it – now that Coulson is dead, Clint is pretty much the only one who drives in these days. If Fury or Nat stop by, Clint is generally with them in the jet. So Lila rounds the house and screeches, does a hop and a skip and a jump before rushing to him.

Clint is quick to duck down and sweep her up, laughing all the way.

‘Hello, sweetheart,’ he laughs, presses kisses to her hair, and adjusts her on his hip, settles her arm better around his neck so it’s not pulling on his collar so much, and heads for house, only for Cooper to fling himself out of the door and into his free arm with a yell to rival his sister’s.

‘Dad! You’re home!’

‘Good lord,’ Clint laughs, and adjusts his arm, hikes Cooper up too, who goes appropriately limp to make it easier on him.

He’s really too big to be carried like this, but he gets them up the stairs anyway, takes them inside and gets proper hugs from them, dropping down onto his knees to hug them right.

Honestly, this is the part of being home he’s missed most, being able to hold his children and feel their hearts beat and hear them talk over each other in desperate attempts to fill him in on everything he’s missed. He manages to extract himself from them to take his jacket off, tossing it onto the chair and stretching out his shoulders.

Lila’s missing a new tooth, and he touches her chin when he notices, angles her up a little to have a look.

‘Ooh,’ he says, ‘that one was giving you some trouble. Bet you’re glad it’s gone now, eh?’

Her tongue flicks into the gap, and his finger is quick enough to poke it. She rears back with a squeal, and he laughs.

‘You get money from the tooth fairy?’ he asks, and she nods.

‘Yep! I got two dollars, in a pretty little bag with fairy dust!’

Clint smiles, flicks her nose, and gets to his feet. ‘She’s nice, isn’t she? The Tooth Fairy?’

Lila’s hand finds his, and he squeezes tight, lets her drag him through to the dining room, where her and Coop have been making – something. It’s a large art piece, and he has no idea what it is, but it’ll go up on the wall when it’s done, just like the rest.

‘Super nice,’ Lila agrees, ‘I got a whole twenty dollars now!’

Clint does the maths, and looks at her. ‘How many teeth have you lost?’

‘Five,’ she says, ‘but Momma gave me two lots of five dollars because I helped with chores when she was sick.’

‘Sick?’ Clint asks.

‘The baby,’ Laura says from the doorway, and Clint whips around so fast he almost pulls Lila, whose hand is still in his, off her feet. ‘I’m getting morning sickness worse this time.’

She looks rough, Clint thinks, tired and washed-out, her hair raked back and tied into a messy ponytail. She’s wearing one of his shirts, and he’d forgotten about those pyjama shorts. He’s fairly certain she hates them, actually, but he’d forgotten she had them at all. Lucky is at her side, a faithful guardian, and he’s glad.

‘Go back to bed,’ he tells her, ‘I’ll keep an eye on these two, you go rest up.’

‘I’m tired of resting,’ she sniffs, and crosses the kitchen to get a hug and a kiss from him.

She smells of mouthwash and sick and sweat, and he kisses her anyway, bumps their noses, hand sneaking under her shirt to rest against her belly. There’s the slightest bump, barely noticeable except that he knows her body as well as he knows his own. He thumbs the scar under her waistband, and she snickers against his mouth.

‘Behave yourself,’ she whispers, and tugs his ear. Bumping his nose again, she settles back on her heels and runs a hand through his hair. ‘Go shower, honey, you smell.’

 ‘So do you,’ he teases, and eventually peels his hands away from her. ‘Alright, you kids going to be okay?’

They nod, assure him that they’ll keep working on their poster, and Clint follows Laura upstairs.

‘You sure you’re alright?’ he asks, and she laughs, switches places to follow him into the bathroom, admiring the arch of his spine as he yanks his shirt over his head.

‘I’m fine,’ she promises. ‘I’ve been drinking plenty, and eating where I can. Our baby’s just got a – it’s much more excitable than the other two were.’

He hums, studies her for a second. ‘Have you been to the clinic?’ he asks, ‘the walk-in at Marshalltown?’

Laura gives him a droll look. ‘You think I can drive in this state?’ she snorts. ‘I rang them, and asked for advice, and they gave me nothing I didn’t already know. I told them that you’d be home soon, and they suggested we go in together, and I don’t know about you, but there’s been Avengers stuff all over the news again the last couple of weeks.’

Clint groans, pulling a face, and throws his trousers in the laundry hamper.

‘Yeah,’ Laura says, and drags the chair over to the toilet to take a seat in easy reach if she throws up again. ‘That’s exactly what I thought. I tell you what though, I’ve been craving those awful bacon sandwiches you make like _crazy_. When you’ve got five minutes, I don’t suppose – ‘

Clint finishes getting undressed and laughs.

‘Of course,’ he tells her, ‘I’ll be doing all the cooking and that while I’m home anyway, so I’ll take the hawks out to do groceries in a bit, yeah?’

He gives her a raking look.

‘Now, ma’am,’ he says, ‘are you going to join me?’

* * *

_2015_

The third time Clint catches Wanda picking at her hands and staring into space, he ushers Cooper into the kitchen and makes a detour to the couch, hiking his jeans to crouch and rest his hands over hers. It’s easy to slide them in between her curled fingers, wrap around, squeeze gentle. Her eyes snap to his, and he smiles.

‘Hello, sweetheart,’ he says, and she takes a breath.

Her fingers flex. He squeezes tighter. Her nails dig. He smiles some more.

‘Come with me,’ he says, and gets to his feet, tugs her up.

‘You’re married,’ she croaks, and Clint laughs.

‘I am,’ he agrees, ‘but that’s not what I’m after. Look, I’ll be the first to admit I am very attracted to my wife, but I am old enough to be your father, and – look that doesn’t matter, alright? I’m not pulling you away for some immoral rendezvous in the woods.’

He’s not pulling her anywhere, because they haven’t moved yet.

‘Then where?’ she asks, frowning at their hands.

‘I’m taking you to the woods,’ he nods, ‘but I’m taking you there because you need to go to the woods. You need space, space you can’t get here.’

Wanda doesn’t want space. She gets left alone enough to have all the space she could want, and Cooper’s getting good at coming and sitting with her when she wants quiet company. She doesn’t want space.

She tells him that. ‘I don’t want space,’ she says.

‘You’ll need it,’ he says, ‘I don’t want you to destroy the house. Come on.’

Laura’s on the porch swing with Lila, reading a book when they come through the kitchen doors.

‘We’re going to the woods,’ he tells his wife, and she nods, touches Lila’s shoulder.

‘We need to go in, sweetheart,’ she says. Once Lila’s inside, she looks between her husband and his stray, and says, ‘be careful, alright? I’ll – I’ll have everything ready for when you come back.’

He thanks her, and ushers Wanda down the steps.

‘Clint,’ she starts, but he cuts her off.

‘You hate me,’ he tells her. ‘No, that’s – no, I know what hate feels like. But you blame me. It’s okay. I blame me, too. If it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t be dead.’

Wanda burns white-hot for a second, but Clint keeps his grip around her hand. The air buzzes, and then settles.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she says, stiff. ‘He made the decision to save you. He knew what would happen.’

Clint smiles, bitter. Sad. ‘He did. But that doesn’t make you blame me any less. I’ve not stopped thinking about it, you know. About what I could have done differently, a quicker route I could have taken, a better place I could have gone. I think – I probably had time to get behind cover. I could have been faster. I could have done so much more, and then he’d never have had to die to save me.’

‘There was a boy,’ she starts, and the way she says it, God, he’d never thought she’d give him an out.

‘I’ve done worse rescues in worse conditions with worse people,’ he shrugs, ‘the kid was no older than Coop. Maybe a couple of years younger. I’ve carried people heavier than me out of worse odds with a broken leg and cracked ribs. I wasn’t injured; I could have carried the kid out of there faster than that.’

Wanda falls silent, and lets him drag her into the woods.

‘Clint,’ she starts a second time. ‘What are we doing here?’

‘You need space,’ he tells her again. ‘You need space to punch me in the face without the kids seeing it.’

‘I’m not going to punch you in the face,’ she says, frowns at him and yanks her hand free of his.

‘You are,’ he says, ‘you want to. You want to make me suffer, because you’re suffering. It’s okay. I want you to beat the shit out of me. It’ll help.’

Wanda gapes at him. ‘Have you gone mad?’

‘Probably,’ he says, with _that_ smile. That smile he gives his kids when he’s being indulgent, the same sort of smile her father gave her and Pietro.

She socks him in the mouth and knocks him flat. Rolling to his feet, he wipes blood from his split lip and laughs.

‘Good,’ he says, keeps smiling that smile. How did she not know he was a father within seconds of clapping eyes on him? It’s so obvious, in every pore of his body, and she _hates_ it. ‘Again.’

Wanda is not built to punch someone, not built to fight with her fists, and Clint doesn’t seem to care that her powers are slipping in, supporting her as she calls him a thousand names for every bruise she sets to bloom. The only times he blocks her are when her poor aim almost gets his vitals; he wants her to get this out of her system, wants her to transfer her grief to him, because he can – and will, gladly – take it, but he doesn’t want to die. Powerless, she’d only crack his ribs; with them, she’ll shatter them.

His refusal to so much as flick her nose only maddens her more.

‘You’re doing good,’ he tells her once, when she shoves him through a tree. He comes up coughing, wipes his bloody nose. ‘You’re doing so good. When you’re ready to, you’re going to thrive in the Avengers. You’re going to be so good.’

The praise catches her off-guard, and she pauses mid-swing. He catches her hand when it hovers there, watches her face.

‘Clint, I.’ She swallows, sniffs. ‘Clint – I – I – I'm done.’

He nods, gives her hand a squeeze, and lets go. It falls to her side, still a white-knuckle fist, and stays there.

‘I suppose it’s not a question of feeling better,’ he says, ‘stretch, please. You’ll ache in the morning if you don’t. But do you feel better?’

She stretches, half-hearted until his pointed stare has her stretching her arms across and behind and up and down and back and forth until they feel numb.

‘Yes,’ she says, with a nod. ‘Yes, I – a little. It is. Hard. I look at you, and all I see is the – the absence of him.’  

He nods, and gestures towards the house. Wanda starts walking, and when Clint limps after her, she offers her arm. He takes it, thanks her.

‘I understand,’ he says, ‘I – bringing you here. Where it is all me and no him. Probably not the best idea. But I didn’t want you to be alone. I want you to find happiness. Somehow. However it is you find it. When you’re ready, anyway. I’ll be there, I guess. The least I can do for him is to make sure you’re alright. That you find some sort of – some future where things aren’t fucking awful.’

‘Things aren’t awful,’ she assures him with a squeeze of her hand against his arm. ‘You’re still alive. Your children still have their father. That’s something.’

 He huffs out a laugh. ‘Thank you.’

Back at the house, Laura meets them with a first-aid kit and water.

‘You know,’ she says, as she helps her husband up the stairs, ‘I’m all for you helping everyone through their grief, but I wish you’d stop doing it like this.’

‘It works,’ he shrugs, and winces when it pulls his ribs.

‘Is there anything you need me to do?’ Wanda asks, and Laura shakes her head.

Clint reaches for her, and when she goes, he tugs her into a hug. Pressing a bloody kiss to her hair, he squeezes as tight as he can manage.

‘Get a good night’s rest,’ he tells her, quiet. ‘I’ll be alright. You did good out there. I’ll have to teach you how to throw a punch. Nat will be disgusted if I let you go to HQ throwing a punch like that.’

She stands there and holds him for a few moments more before letting go and retreating upstairs without another word.

(In three days time, Clint’s head will still be spinning, and Helen Cho will call in the middle of the night.)


	9. Mission Report

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> implied sex, minor violence

_2015_

‘Oi, Star Spangled Man!’

Steve turns, and Clint tosses a garden fork at him. Bucky starts to laugh, and nearly gets a spade to the face for his trouble.

‘Make yourselves useful!’

He points at the half-turfed area, and Steve looks at Bucky, who looks at the dirt and grass.

‘Gardening?’ he asks, quiet, and Steve shrugs.

‘Apparently so. Come on, let’s get to work.’

Clint comes back a few minutes later, armed with a can of spray paint and an edging knife.

‘I need to make a proper patio area,’ he explains, and starts spraying a large square. ‘For the barbeque, you know? Now that you lot are coming over more regularly, we had to get a bigger one. I’m thinking of a fire pit, too.’

‘Is that a good idea?’ Steve asks, thinking about the kids, and about Thor, really.

Something funny crosses Clint’s face for a second. ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s not like I’m stupid enough to set myself on fire with it.’

Neither Steve nor Bucky is particularly reassured by this comment, and share a look.

When Clint’s sprayed the area and examined it – by eye, he judges the line slightly crooked, and re-sprays a section to make it squarer – he hands Bucky the edging knife.

‘Get the turf up,’ he instructs, ‘and try to get the dirt level. Come get me when you’re done.’

And with that, he’s dusting his hands off and retreating back inside. The boys wait for a second, but he doesn’t look like he’s coming back.

Well, then.

‘Remember doing – ‘ Steve starts.

‘Not really,’ Bucky replies, and makes the first cut into the turf along the line Clint’s drawn for them.

Between them, they make short work of the grass, getting it up and out of the way, and Steve attempts to level it off, but Bucky didn’t expect the spade to go quite as deep as it had, and some parts are clearly deeper than others.

‘Oh,’ he says, when he looks at the uneven hole. ‘Well, I tried. He won’t hate me for it.’

Steve gives him a look.

‘He’ll hate you,’ Bucky assures him with a beaming grin that reeks of troublemaking, ‘you should know better.’

‘I hate you,’ Steve whispers, kicking at the dirt, and Bucky laughs.

Clint comes back when they yell for him, armed with a tray of iced tea and fresh cookies.

‘You did that quicker than I expected,’ he says, and Bucky beams at him. ‘And better, too. I can’t turf that well. Needs levelling, but nope, good job, kids.’

Bucky preens under the praise. Steve looks mildly baffled.

* * *

_1996_

Laura’s had Clint home for three, almost four days, and she’s determined to make full use of what time she’s got with him. After being gone a month or so, she thinks she’s earned the right to keep him in her bed for a few days. Well-fed, of course, because he never eats when he’s away, and he’s no good to her half-dead. So fed, and caught up on his sleep, and he willingly – gleefully, even, because he enjoys her, ahem, company, as much as she enjoys his – hands himself over to her.

It’s just her luck then that his phone goes off with some important, world-saving emergency or another, right when they’re getting to the best bit.

Clint thumps the pillow and shifts her leg to give him space to lean without popping her hip, and he snatches his phone.

‘What?’ he grunts when he answers, and Laura sighs, rakes her hair back from her face and settles in to wait.

It’s not the most _comfortable_ position they’ve ever been in, but they’re closer than they usually get when this shit happens. That’s something to be grateful for. And the view she has of her boyfriend is really rather wonderful, all the long lines of his muscles and faded bruises and as he listens to the call, his finger traces round-and-round the shape of the bow on her hip, arrow pointed up to him with how her leg’s bent.

She shudders, and he offers her a raking little grin. She flips him off, and he mostly manages to bite back a laugh.

‘Sorry, sir,’ he immediately says, ‘I’m paying attention.’

His eyes roll heavenward, and she grins, curls her ankles around his hips. He pinches at the bone and detangles her legs with his free hand.

‘Stop that,’ he tells her, and then pulls a face. ‘No, sir. I’m not busy at all, sir. Absolutely not, sir.’

He gives her such a dirty look and she bites onto the fleshy part of her hand to muffle her laughter.

‘Sir,’ Clint starts, apologetic, but stops abruptly, and continues to give her that same dirty look.

He’s clearly in trouble. She signs an apology. It’s obvious insincerity gets her Clint’s middle finger waved in her face. She tries to snatch it, but he’s faster than her, and continues to wave it in triumph.

‘No, sir,’ he sighs. ‘No, I can come in.’

YOU ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT, she signs.

He shrugs.

YOU ARE BUSY.

He begins to pull away, but she hooks her ankles and glares.

DON’T YOU DARE.

‘Yes,’ Clint says, ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. The Triskellion, yes, of course sir. I’ll get ready now, sir. I won’t be long.’

He hangs up, and begins trying to untangle Laura’s legs, but she’s determined to become a limpet, and fastens every limb around him.

‘Honey,’ he sighs.

‘Nope,’ she says, biting at his collar, since it’s there. ‘Nope, you’re mine, you promised.’

‘I promised that as long as I was home, I was yours,’ he says, ‘and now I gotta go to work.’

‘Still home,’ she argues, and Clint groans.

‘Honey, come on, I gotta go. They need me.’

‘I need you. How about _that_ , huh? How about the fact we’re supposed to be _engaged_ , huh?’

 He looks away, sighs, and Laura squints up at him. He looks guilty as sin, reluctant as all hell. He doesn’t want to go any more than she wants him to, but whoever had been on the other end of the phone was not someone who usually called him; he’s never had trouble telling Fury or Phil that he is balls-deep before now, and she doubts he’ll stop telling them.

‘Look,’ he starts, and she grunts, unwraps her limbs and lets him pull away.

She misses him as soon as he’s gone, and makes a whining noise that has him chuckling and leaning down to kiss her.

‘I’ll be home as soon as I can; it didn’t sound like an extended mission, yeah? I’m not even leaving the country. I’ll be a week, at most.’

‘We’ll fight about it then,’ she sniffs, and he chuckles against her mouth before pulling away to get dressed.

She pretends like she doesn’t mourn the loss of his ass.

* * *

_1999_

Clint arrives at HQ half-dressed and with dark circles around his eyes and toothpaste smeared across his cheek. Everyone is so used to him not being remotely prepared that no one bats an eyelid, and he strolls through to D-Wing, room thirteen, where he was told to go when he took the call. Coulson and Nat are waiting for him, and he drops into the empty chair. Hand gives him a despairing look. Nat points out the toothpaste, and he wipes it off with a licked finger.

‘Now that Agent Barton has decided to grace us with his presence – here’s your file, Barton, read it quickly – we can get started on debrief.’

He flicks through, scans for keywords, and picks up the gist of the mission as he listens to Hand. A simple get in, get intel, get the target alive, get out. They’ve done worse in harsher conditions.

‘At least Colorado’s nice this time of year,’ he chimes, and Coulson gives him a look.

‘Barton, please pay attention, I don’t have time for your quips today. Phil, I want you back in the audience. You know the protocol.’

He nods, and casts a look at Clint, whose shoulders are slowly tightening beneath his undershirt. Given that it has no sleeves, it’s even more obvious than normal. Nat has also noticed his discomfort, but at least has the brains to not mention it.

‘Romanoff, Barton, you’re to find and extract the target. We need him alive. He’s the head of the circuit, so you’ll have to find a way to get in there. I’m sure you’ll be able to think of something. He’s heavily guarded at all times, and only champions are normally allowed in.’

Clint swallows thickly. ‘Understood,’ he says.

He doesn’t look up from the file. Nat watches him before looking up at Hand when she prompts her for an answer.

‘I understand,’ she says.

‘I’m sure you have a few options available,’ Hand says, ‘but we want him as soon as possible. Don’t make a fuss.’

‘Agent Hand,’ Coulson starts, and chews his words. ‘Do you want – is this going to be – are you asking me to put my – are we repeating ’91?’

He seems to be struggling to think of words that won’t give away his thoughts to outside parties. Nat wonders what ’91 refers to.

‘The Kitchen?’ Hand asks. ‘Yes. That is what I’m asking.’

 Clint goes still for only a second, but it is a second enough that Nat knows he knows what mission it was that Coulson saw. Perhaps Clint was there. He joined S.H.I.E.L.D. in ’91, right? She wonders if she can get it out of him on the drive over to Colorado. They would be driving, right?

‘Are we driving?’ she asks.

‘Barton and I will be driving,’ Phil tells her. ‘You’ll be sitting pretty and listening to us sing really badly to country music.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Clint grumbles. ‘I can sing just fine.’

‘I can drive,’ Nat protests, and Clint is an asshole, ruffles her hair.

‘I know you can,’ he says, ‘but you’re not driving across the country. Not today.’

She juts her jaw, but accepts that Clint does know better. Kind of. His face is red where he rubbed the toothpaste off.

‘Your fly’s undone,’ she snipes.

‘I’m wearing sweatpants, I don’t have a fly,’ he replies without missing a beat.

Hand looks like she’s about to give up on them, and shoots Coulson a look. He looks proud of his team. Of course he does.

‘Right, well if we’re up to date, go pack and be at the garage in four hours.’

Clint does a bit of math in his head, apparently decides he has enough time to do whatever it is he wants to go and do (which won’t be packing, because it’s never packing) and heads straight for the exit the moment they’re out of the meeting room.

‘Barton!’ Coulson calls, and he stops, wheels back.

‘What?’ he grunts.

‘No later than two,’ he says, wags his finger. ‘We can’t hang about too long. I’d rather get going before then, I hate driving in the dark.’

‘I’ll be here for two, don’t worry,’ Clint says, and strides off down the corridor and out of sight.

‘Where’s he going?’ Nat asks.

‘To get a dogsitter,’ Coulson shrugs. ‘Probably run a couple of errands. Hopefully get dressed.’

Clint is back by half-past one, dressed in his usual gear, bow and arrows slung over one shoulder, duffel tucked under the other arm.

‘You won’t need that,’ Coulson tells him, gesturing at the bow.

Clint gives him a look.

‘Alright,’ Coulson says, and tells him to throw it in the boot with the rest of the equipment.

The drive to Colorado takes just over twenty-five hours, and they take it in five hour shifts. They talk, briefly, about the mission. Nat gets the feeling that they’re referencing a mission they did in the past. There’s a lot of talk about a kitchen, and she’s got no idea what that’s about. It sounds like a good story, though.

‘How are we going to get into the target’s office?’ she asks. ‘I could flirt my way up there.’

‘Absolutely not,’ her two boys snap, and Clint, who’s currently driving, tightens his grip on the wheel enough that his arms shake.

‘I don’t want you anywhere near him,’ he says, and Nat rolls her eyes.

‘I’m seventeen, Clint. I did worse at fourteen.’

‘I don’t give a fuck,’ he tells her, and she throws herself back in her seat. ‘And put your seatbelt on.’

She glares at the back of his head, but clips her seatbelt into place all the same.

‘Then how?’ she asks, ‘I’m the best chance we’ve got at getting in there, unless we’re supposed to hire a boxer, but why didn’t Hand send one of the other teams in? I know a few of them are former professional boxers. They’d be perfect for it.’

‘They aren’t good enough,’ Coulson says, ‘there’s a reason they aren’t professional anymore.’

Clint stares resolutely ahead and ignores them both.

‘Hand gave us this mission for a reason,’ Coulson continues, ‘I’m pretty sure she wants to evaluate us. Let’s just get to the ring first, okay? We’ll work out our plan of attack from there. It’d be just our luck to send you up to him and find out he’s as gay as they come.’

‘Should have sent Sitwell, then,’ Clint bites, and Coulson sighs.

They drive in silence for half an hour, and then Nat sees an exit for a service station.

‘Pull in there, we need to stop anyway.’

Clint doesn’t argue, and pulls into the appropriate lane for the turning. It’s a nice little truck stop, and they make use of the facilities. Coulson buys snacks. Clint flirts with the cashier. Nat tries on sunglasses. They agree to stop off at the next restaurant and get dinner before heading back to the car, Coulson taking over driving this time. It’s getting dark, so Clint chooses to sit in the back, and curls up in the back seat with his jacket over his head, while Nat takes shotgun and tries to get information from Coulson. It doesn’t work, but she tries.

When it comes to time to swap again, they pull into a roadside restaurant, some chain that Coulson isn’t particularly fond of, but Clint and Nat love. It’s decent enough food though, and they eat as much as they can handle before putting it under expenses and heading on their way. Clint says that he’ll drive through the night, and Coulson looks like he’ll argue, but Clint glares.

‘Get some rest,’ he tells both Coulson and Nat, and they settle down to do so.

‘If you need me to take over,’ Coulson starts, ‘don’t be afraid to tell me. I’ll happily drive. You need to sleep.’

Clint rolls his shoulders. ‘I’ll be fine. You’ll be one doing all the thinking here.’

Nat looks between them, and then settles in to sleep, curling up in the backseat with Clint’s jacket as a blanket. They drive in silence, Clint listening to the radio quietly playing popular songs and local news reports. Apparently, Tony Stark’s been up to something in Missouri that’s worth reporting on. Clint couldn’t care less. Stark’s been indirectly winding S.H.I.E.L.D. up for years now, but over the last few months, there’s been word of trying to pull him in, of undermining the military to get Stark’s tech for themselves. Clint thinks it’s a waste of time.

He drives through to early morning, and when the sun comes up enough to shine off the chrome, it wakes Coulson, who looks accusingly at Clint.

‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ he whispers, and glances back to where Nat is still curled up, fast asleep. ‘You’re going to be too tired to fight.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Clint whispers back, but he looks exhausted. ‘It’s not like it’s hard.’

‘These are _professionals_. Clint, you – this isn’t Fogwell’s.’

‘I don’t want it to be,’ Clint murmurs, ‘I don’t want it to be anything like it. You do your job, alright? I’ll do mine.’

‘Are you going to be able to win?’ he asks.

‘I don’t have a choice. I’m what, seventy, eighty pounds heavier than I was ten years ago? I’m in a much better place. Much, _much_ better place. I can do it. I have to do it.’

Coulson rubs his face. ‘I know that. We don’t have a choice, if we miss our window, it’ll be another five years before he surfaces again. We have to do it now. But, I’m just – if you get chance, call a higher authority, alright? Make sure she knows.’

‘She knows,’ Clint murmurs. ‘I told her.’

‘Then make sure she knows you’ve still got all your teeth,’ Coulson says, and that’s the end of the conversation, as Nat kicks the back of Clint’s seat when she stretches, and they can’t say anything after that.

* * *

_1994_

The split is a mutual decision. Clint is racked with guilt for putting Laura through hell, and Laura respects herself too much to put herself through it. She can’t sit up all night worrying that he’s never coming home, and Clint can’t ask her to put her life on hold for him and his comings and goings. It’s not fair on her, not when there’s someone out there with a nine-to-five who could give her more than he ever could. The two-point-five children, the picket fence. He’s got the dog, but that’s about all he can offer her.

It kills him, but he brings it up, and feels nothing but relief when she agrees whole-heartedly. They’re honest about it, about their relationship, about what they need, about what they can’t get, and they go their separate ways.

For the first week or so, it’s fine. Laura goes to work, and goes to dinner with friends. She even goes to her dad’s for a long weekend, for the first time in months. (The days she had saved up, they were in case of emergency, in case she had to take off to look after Clint, or in case something happened. She doesn’t tell anybody that.) Naturally, she hates it, because he and her step-brothers ask about her boyfriend who she’d mentioned once or twice on the phone.

‘Oh,’ she says, ‘it didn’t work out. Didn’t end bad, though, so I’m not heart-broken or anything.’

Her dad doesn’t believe her, and sends her home with a care package of Tupperware and expensive toiletries. She’s almost twenty-four, but it doesn’t seem to matter to him. They don’t have the best relationship, but he cares a lot, and that means a lot to her.

She misses Lucky, but doesn’t miss Clint’s cold feet kicking her in the middle of the night, or his damp towels left on the floor. She definitely doesn’t miss the blood and sweat stench of him when he comes home after a week away in who-knows-where doing who-knows-what. About the only thing of him she misses is the way he smiles when he thinks she’s not looking. But she’ll meet another guy who smiles like that. It’s not a special smile by any means.

The second week is harder. Laura’s apartment is too quiet without him and his dog, and walking home in the dark is not so nice now that there’s no one to talk to. The first night she lies awake waiting for him to walk through the door, even though she knows he won’t, that’s the night she knows she’s in too deep. They haven’t spoken since the split, and they’d agreed that was for the best. If they kept in contact, Laura would continue to worry, and that wasn’t what Clint wanted for her.

So she lies there, and she stares at the ceiling, and listens to the sound of a party a few doors down. Her breathing sounds too loud, her bed feels too big and too cold. She rolls over, curls into a ball, breathes in the smell of lavender and camomile – Clint hates this fabric softener, she thinks, he thinks it smells like old people and not at all like her – and feels a prickle in her throat.

‘Bastard,’ she whispers, and kicks her way out of bed to go and watch an action movie. She finds a stack of his shoved haphazard into the middle of hers, and she scowls at them before pulling them out and shoving them into the cupboard. Out of sight, out of mind.

She puts her awful bed socks on and makes cocoa and doesn’t care that it’s the middle of the night, Bruce Willis is exploding things at full volume, and she pretends that she doesn’t bury her head in her hands halfway through.

In the third week, she decides that she needs to get out of this rut before it begins. She wasn’t so deeply into Clint that she can’t escape, that she has to mope about broken-hearted for six months before she’s ready to date again. They weren’t even really _official_ to begin with! They just sort of, happened. It was a fun, mutual fling. They had fun. That’s all it was.

Sure, she liked him, more than she liked any of her previous boyfriends, but that didn’t mean anything. He wasn’t even her type! She didn’t like the muscular type, and she preferred brown hair, anyway. She liked small bookish boys, the smart sort with glasses and cardigans that could quote poetry. That was her kind of boy.

So she finds one, and she asks him on a date.

It’s been almost a month since she last saw Clint. For all she knows, he could be dead. That doesn’t bother her! It was going to happen eventually! He always said he might never come back! She’s fine with that! He’s not her problem anymore! Ha-ha-ha!

Her date doesn’t pick her up, but that’s fine, she didn’t want him to. She meets him in the restaurant where they agreed to have dinner, and she’s wearing a new dress. She’s got perfume and pretty jewellery and her shoes match her handbag. Making an effort for a date is nice; with Clint, there was almost no need to, because they never went anywhere fancy. They never needed to, they were quite content with going to relaxed places with good, hearty food, where they laughed loud and drank beer rather than wine, and sang along to the CD playing in the background.

So this is nice. Sophisticated, grown-up. A real adult’s date, rather than the date of kids playing pretend.

The guy is nice. Confident and sure of himself and his opinion. It starts to grate the third time he cuts her off. She sips at her wine. It tastes bitter. She misses her cheap Sutter Home and Clint’s wrinkled nose when she kissed him with a mouthful.

Her date mentions dogs.

‘I like dogs,’ Laura says, ‘especially Labradors.’

Her date talks about pitbulls. The waitress comes to take their order. She gives her a pitiful look, and Laura begs with her eyes to be saved. The waitress can do nothing, and leaves with their orders.

Laura hopes she deliberately gets the order wrong so she can stage a tantrum and leave. She doesn’t have that kind of luck, though.

She makes it through the main course without throwing her wine on the guy, but it’s a close call. The food is nice, but what she ordered, so she doesn’t get to send it back and walk out. Shame. Her date talks and talks and talks. He talks with his mouth full. Clint did that, but he at least had the grace to either cover his mouth. Half chewed stroganoff is disgusting.

As they order dessert – Laura wants to go home, dig out the ice cream in the freezer, and eat it all and not spend another minute here – there’s a slam against the window, and Laura can’t help but turn. There he is, the selfish bastard, looking like absolute _hell_ , beard and filthy T-shirt and band aids everywhere, trying to pull his over-excited dog off of the window. Laura’s heart leaps into her throat. He looks awful, and she hopes, hopes, hopes it’s because he can’t handle being away from her. Because he likes her as much as she likes him and it made her sick to her stomach, the thought that she might never see him again.

Her date makes a quip about uncontrollable dogs. Dessert arrives. Laura asks for it to go. Her date makes another quip about how Clint looks right now.

Laura’s fist flies before she even has time to consider, and she hopes that crack was his teeth and not her knuckles.

The waitress brings dessert back, packed away in a nice little box, and looks at the blood starting to stream from Laura’s date’s nose.

‘Thank you,’ Laura says, and gets to her feet, fishes every note she has from her purse and shoves it into the waitress’ hand, collects her coat and her bag, and sweeps from the silent restaurant.

Lucky is there to meet her, leaping up to lap at her face. It’s rained recently, but Laura sits on the street all the same, and gives him all the rubs and nose kisses he could ever, ever want, cooing at him in plain sight of the window.

Clint lingers to one side, and when she looks up, he’s looking at her with that smile of his, the one where he thinks she’s not looking. Her heart lunges to her tongue, and she almost tells him she loves him.

‘There’s enough dessert in this box for two,’ she says instead. ‘If you wanted to share.’

‘Sure you don’t want to share with the dog?’ he asks.

Everything suddenly feels right; the air smells crisper, feels warmer, everything is a little more vivid, louder and brighter. Perfect. She laughs, lurches to her feet and throws herself into his waiting arms. He crushes her to him, buries his scratchy face in her neck. He’s got a black eye, and grazes along his spine; he’s been thrown somewhere, into a wall or across the floor. She rubs her hand over his skin, smoothes over spots that feel alright. A little warm; bruises. But alright.

‘I missed you,’ he whispers, sounds rough against her pulse, ‘I missed you so much. Let’s go home.’

* * *

_1995_

Clint sounds harried when he calls her.

‘I don’t have long,’ he pants, and there’s a crash and he curses himself blue. ‘I’m kind of – in the middle of the – I’m working, ha-ha.’

Laura, at work, and you know, working, squints at her computer screen.

‘Are you alright?’ she asks, ‘do I need to call somebody?’

‘Naw, it’s okay,’ Clint assures her, but he’s out of breath, and she thinks she can hear –

‘Is that gunfire?’ she chokes out, halfway out of her seat before realising that she’s at work, and her co-workers are staring at her, and she can’t do anything anyway.

‘Maybe,’ Clint admits. ‘Listen, I’ll be home by – what time is it?’ When she tells him it’s twenty-four minutes past two, he swears again. ‘I’m behind schedule, aw man, they’re gonna kill me. Okay, listen. I’m gonna be back by like five. Maybe six if it doesn’t go to plan. Wear your nicest dress. I’m picking you up at seven-forty-five, okay?’

‘I don’t have a nicest dress,’ she tells him.

‘Then get one, I’ll wire you some money.’

Laura feels something in her eye twitch. ‘You don’t have my account details.’

‘Sure I do. I’ll put a couple of thousand in, get what you like. I should have time in an hour or so.’

‘Clint, can’t we do this another day? You know, when you’re not getting shot at?’

‘I’m not getting shot at,’ he promises. The gunfire sounds louder. ‘Alright, tomorrow, then. I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll wire the money over tonight, buy a nice dress during your lunch hour or something, I don’t know. Look your best. It’s not like you have to try.’

She’s oddly flattered by the compliment. She’s pretty sure it’s a compliment. Honestly, it’s hard to tell.

‘You’re breaking up,’ she tells him, even though he’s not. ‘Call me back after you’re done working, okay?’

‘Alright,’ he huffs. ‘Take care of yourself.’

‘Take your own advice,’ she snorts, and tells him to be careful before he hangs up. ‘Weirdo.’

He calls her on her landline late in the evening, and he sounds tired and sore and she wants to give his no-doubt rigid shoulders a rub. Forever over-doing it, that boy. She is, however, glad to hear his voice, glad that he’s safe at home once more.

‘You finished work, then?’ she asks, and he hums.

‘Yeah, yeah, I got it done. I’m home now, for a few days anyway. They wanted me straight back out, but I told ‘em naw, I got other stuff I gotta do, y’know? They don’t know it, but I gotta take my girl out. Oh! I wired you the money, by the way. Should be in your account now.’

She promises to check in the morning. ‘Go have a bath, Clint, your accent’s out of control.’

‘It’s fine,’ he slurs, but she can hear him groaning and grumbling to himself as he gets to his feet and shuffles in the direction of the bathroom.

If she listens carefully, she can hear the pipes creaking and the whoosh of the water as it begins filling the tub.

‘Sorry,’ he says after a few minutes. ‘If I fall asleep.’

‘It’s fine, honey,’ she assures him, and curls up a little tighter on the couch.

On the TV, _Beverly Hills, 90210_ is playing on low volume. She’s not really paying attention, and catching up to the drama is going to be a pain. Clint is much more interesting to listen to, though, and she feels a moment of relief at the sound of his sigh as he eases himself into the tub, because he’s relaxing, he’s calm, he’s alive and well and not so badly injured he can’t even bathe himself.

She’s not sure he can when he’s at peak health, but at least he’s not got to have a nanny this time. She’s met his nanny. The worst part is Coulson says he’s been called worse.

They talk a little more – at one point, Clint greets the dog, who barks when Laura calls down the phone to him – and Clint’s answers get more delayed to the point Laura tells him to put the phone down.

‘You’ll drop it in the water,’ she says, ‘and that’s no good.’

‘Like hearing you talk,’ he replies, in that sleepy, higher-pitched voice he has when he’s trying to flirt but doesn’t have the energy.

‘I’m sure you do,’ she says, ‘but I don’t think you want to electrocute yourself. Put the phone on the side, Clint, before you fall asleep.’

‘I’ll get out of the bath,’ he tells her.

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

There’s a splash, and he laughs at himself – hopefully, at himself – and a dull thump as he bumps into the wall. His bathroom is not really big enough for him to be messing around like this, but here he is, stumbling about.

‘There,’ he says, ‘got a towel. And I'm out the water. Can listen to you all night now.’

Laura looks longingly at the handsome boy on the TV. It’s a good plotline. She gets up to turn it off, and settles back on the couch.

‘Alright then,’ she says, ‘what do you want to talk about all night?’

He falls asleep ten minutes into a conversation about the best snacks, and Laura chuckles after realising his breathing has evened out. He’s not on his back, so he’s not snoring, but he’s huffing a little; his chest is bruised, maybe his ribs are broken. The fact they’ve been on-off dating for maybe two months, and she knows him well enough to know when he’s hurt is ridiculous. It’s a little sad, really. A little heart-breaking.

He’s a heart-breaker, that’s for sure.

‘Good night, honey,’ she breathes, and he sniffles back, a sleeping acknowledgement of her voice.

She listens for a little longer, and then hangs up.

In the morning on the way to work, she stops by the bank and checks her account. There’s three thousand more than yesterday, deposited by CFB and she snorts at the printout in her hand. Her phone starts ringing five minutes after she’s sat at her desk, and she answers.

‘Good morning, this is the Volans Agency, you’ve reached Laura Harcourt, how can I help?’

‘Ah, yes, I was wondering if you could help me confirm a transaction?’

She laughs, and kicks her feet a little. ‘Hello, honey,’ she hums, and then clears her throat. ‘I can confirm the transaction was successful, and you’re still a loser.’

‘Hey, hey, hey now,’ he protests, but never actually furthers his defence of himself, because they both know he’s a loser. ‘Anyway, one last thing before I let you go on with your no-doubt boring day; you’d look great in Chanel, you know that?’

‘I am not buying a Chanel dress, no matter how much money you put in my account, sir,’ she says, and turns her nose up.

Clint huffs, and hangs up without telling her to be careful. She’s mildly offended.

* * *

_2015_

Wanda wakes that first morning aching all over. Clint had assured her she would, and she can hear the sing-song I Told You So in his voice right behind her ear before she’s even opened her eyes. She knows, as she shuffles to the edge of the bed – memory foam mattress topper, and soft, well-washed and well-loved blankets, the nicest bed she’s had in years – that he’ll give her all he can to help her, because he knows, and she knows, that this is the first time she’s used her powers like this, the first fight she’s been in that she’s feared for her life. The emotional pain is almost worse, but she bottles it up and swallows it, lets it fester in her stomach, which grumbles in protest at the lack of food to digest.

She assures it with a dug knuckle that she’ll eat as soon as she’s washed and dressed. Laura had lent her clothes, shorts and a T-shirt and underwear she’s sure are maybe a size up from her, but Clint said he’d call Natasha in the morning, get her to bring over a case of clothes, since they were the same size. He wants her home, she knows, and she hopes that Natasha will come, she wants to talk. It’d be nice to talk.

Raking a hand through her hair and hissing at the sting to hand and scalp both, she stumbles off to the bathroom, and she slaps the light on. It’s still dark out, so it’s early, far too early to be awake, really. She wonders what woke her, and shrugs, squints against the naked light and turns the taps on the sink to wash her face. A bit of cold water would do her good.

It wakes her up, at least, and the cold water feels nice on her hands.

She straightens up, catches sight of herself in the mirror above the sink.

And screams.

She barely hears the crash from the master bedroom, the thump of Clint staggering into the wall and down the hall before he’s bursting into her room.

‘Wanda?’ he calls, and she hasn’t stopped screaming.

He’s half-dressed, in an old T-shirt that clings too tight across his shoulders, and a pair of, frankly, the most disgusting plum-coloured boxers she’s ever seen in her life. She can’t talk, in her underwear herself.

‘No, no, no,’ he babbles, and leaps over the bed to get into the bathroom and take her wrists, squeezing until her hands open. ‘Don’t do that, sweetheart, don’t do that.’

She fights, because it hurts, but it hurts more to fight, and she kicks him in the shin. He ignores it, because she’s not very good at that, and tugs her closer, wraps her in his arms; he smells sleep-warm and soft, and it makes her sick. It makes her sick and her heart slows at the beat of his, knocking against his ribs like a metronome.

It’s so steady, and she listens. She listens and listens and listens, and it drowns out everything else. He’s playing with her hair, brushing his hand over it, sweeping it over her shoulder to rub her back, hold her close.

‘You’re okay,’ he’s whispering, cooing. Fatherly. ‘You’re alright.’

When she’s stopped quaking in his arms, when her breathing is evening out and her heart is steady in her chest, he peels away, ducks down the few inches it takes to look her in the eye.

‘Look at me,’ he says, when she refuses to meet his gaze. ‘Wanda, look at me, please, sweetheart, come on.’

She stares resolutely over his shoulder. He takes her chin in hand, tugs. Their noses bump. She rears back in shock, and glares at him. She meets his eyes. He’s got such a soft look in them, the bluish-green of the sea on a cloudy day, waves lapping the shore with every blink, his lashes like shards of sunlight, and she gets caught in that spell, thinks and thinks and thinks.

‘Good,’ he sighs, cups her face in both hands. His thumbs rub fire-hot and moth-soft against the blackened veins on her face, and she jerks, but he keeps her steady. ‘You’re alright, I’ve got you. You’re safe, sweetheart, you’re safe.’

Her jaw tightens, throat like ash, and he studies her face, watches her as she crumbles, whispers encouragements, endearments, the entire time.

‘I’ve got you,’ he repeats for the thirtieth time. ‘I’ve got you. Let it come, sweetheart, let it come.’

He’s got her when she shatters, and he scoops her up, cradles her close. She hasn’t been held like this by anyone not Pietro for a decade or more. The thought that Pietro will never hold her again hurts more and she sobs harder. Clint kisses her hair, somehow manages to get her back into bed and tucked in without ever letting go.

‘Let me see,’ he asks, soft, when the tears have abated, and Wanda opens her palms.

The blisters are raw and some of them are open, pus-wet and stinking. She looks diseased, rotting, a monster in human form. Strucker has destroyed her, she thinks, but can’t find the words to say it.

‘You’re alright,’ Clint assures, and Laura appears in the doorway. He glances up. ‘Cocoa, please?’

She nods, and disappears. Wanda can hear her ushering the kids away from the landing, downstairs please, hawks, come on, you’ve got cartoons to watch. Wanda doesn’t remember the last time she watched cartoons.

‘This will pass,’ Clint tells her, ‘I promise. You’ve – I guess you overused your – powers? You overdid it, kiddo. It’ll pass. You’ll be alright. I’ll patch you up, and then you just need to rest.’

‘Rest,’ she repeats, the word cracking on the bitter sand of her tongue.

‘Yeah, rest. Sleep, if you want. Or lie there staring at the ceiling if you want to go mad, I suppose. At least the wallpaper’s not yellow.’

She thinks she’s already mad.

* * *

_1991_

It’s Coulson’s first time as point on a mission with Clint, and it’s Clint’s first time on the field as a full-fledged agent. This, she knows, from her chair with her dossier in her lap and her field of view filled with the statistics she needs – the boys’ vitals, satellite imaging of the mission zone, files about the target and the boys themselves. Everything she could want – will either make or break Agent Barton. After Fury asked her to run secondary support, observing the boys from afar to check their skills, their ability to function as a unit, Barton especially, she’d read Barton’s file cover-to-cover and back the other way.

He was a good man. Perhaps too good. He’d fought hard to survive, she knows, done things that were illegal, immoral, but he hadn’t killed anyone, hadn’t hurt anyone except in self-defence. He is expected to kill the target. They’ll never let him go, whether he manages or not, but she hopes, for his sake, that he takes the shot, that he doesn’t miss, that he holds steady. He’s a good man, but he could be great. It would be a shame to lose him this early, to see him break.

Fury, she thinks, had understood that this was important to Barton, to Coulson, and by extension, it was important to her, if not for any more reason than she had stakes in S.H.I.E.L.D. and Barton reminded her of many other handsome blond boys who were too good for their own good. She’d met Barton in passing; a grouch, for sure, a bottled-rage concoction set to blow, a gentle hand on his arm away from shattering. She wonders, briefly, who’ll tear him down and build him back up like a doll played with a little too rough.

It doesn’t matter, though, she decides, because it will be a long time before he is in a position to meet a pretty girl – or a pretty boy, and honestly, she wouldn’t be surprised if word reached her of a compromising position or three – and right now, hypotheticals about his potential future relationships are very far removed from what she needs to actually think about regarding his current position.

Over the next six hours, she watches the feeds and listens to the comms as they make their way through the mission, and Coulson desperately tries to rein his teammate in, because Clint is trying his hardest, but everything is blowing up in his face. At one point, it literally blows up in his face, and they knock half of Chicago’s power out in one go.

The rest of support go still. She rubs a hand over her face.

‘Let’s get it back,’ she says, when there’s no immediate response from the rest of the support team. ‘Power. City. Now, please.’

They snap back into action, and she focuses her attention on the total mess that the mission has become. On the one hand, they have technically completed the mission. On the other, it’s a complete technicality, and they didn’t have permission for technicalities. By the book, Fury had said. It was too early in Barton’s career for him to be going off-script.

She watches as Barton’s tracker drops him into a dumpster in an alley where, she can only presume, he’s just fallen off a roof. If he’s half the acrobat his file indicates he is, then he’ll be fine, and won’t have any broken bones, and she’ll give him no leeway for a bad landing.

The satellites, sadly, aren’t good enough to pick up a live feed of him picking himself out of the dumpster, but they do manage to pick up the black bags strewn across the alley three minutes later when the image updates.

‘This is Coulson,’ comes Coulson’s voice, his marker lighting up and wave of his voice starting, as it should, some minutes later. ‘Just received visual confirmation of target. I can confirm that he’s deceased.’

Barton’s marker lights up and he sounds entirely too chipper when he says, ‘he better be dead, look, his leg’s all the way over there.’

 Support politely informs them that emergency services are on their way to deal with the fire, and they would be advised to vacate the area.

‘Thank you, support, we’ll head to the extraction,’ Coulson says, and his line goes dark.

A moment later, Barton’s does too, and she sits back to wait for them to reach their extraction point. Support gets Chicago’s power back online, and they immediately begin running damage control on the news reports that are already beginning to roll, sending statements about the power cut to the offices to reassure them that it was nothing to fear.

Police will investigate. They’ll find nothing. Support has already sent in clean-up crews. About the only thing that went right during the mission was support. She’ll be sure to mention it to Fury in her report.

When they arrive back at HQ three hours later, Peggy Carter is waiting for them, hands on her hips. Barton is battered and bruised with a three inch cut on his temple and a chunk of skin missing off his nose, and Coulson doesn’t look much better.

‘Both of you,’ she says, and they stop in their tracks.

Barton looks to Coulson for guidance, but Coulson looks about as prepared for this as he does anything, which is to say, he’s gawking at her.

‘Agent Carter, ma’am,’ he starts, and babbles wordlessly for a second before getting himself back under control. ‘Were you, um. Were you our – support?’

‘I was your supervising support, yes,’ she says, and turns her on her heel to march off down the corridor. ‘As a personal favour to Fury, who wanted my opinion on your abilities.’

‘Oh,’ Coulson says.

‘Ah,’ Barton adds.

So articulate, she thinks, and they eventually think to follow after her, hurrying. Barton’s limping. His landing was not as good as it should have been.

He deserves it.

She wonders, as she leads them to her office, what, exactly, they’ll say to defend themselves. Technicalities are not good enough, and she knows that Coulson will know that. S.H.I.E.L.D. needs competent agents able to carry out their business without alerting half of Chicago to their presence.

Coulson defends Barton like she’s sure he would a brother, but it makes Barton’s errors no less his own. He tries to say that for a first mission, he doesn’t think it went so bad, and Coulson stamps on his foot hard enough to make him yelp.

‘This isn’t good enough,’ Peggy tells them, and they both flush.

Barton looks worried, glancing at Coulson as though he could provide some form of support, but all Coulson has to offer is a horrified stare in Peggy’s direction.

‘Ma’am,’ he starts, flustered, ‘ma’am, we – we did the best we could.’

‘You can – and have, many times – done better than this. I expected better. Fury said you were one of his best, and that Barton had great potential, but I’ve seen fresh recruits make and execute better decisions than the ones you made today. I’m going to have to put it in my report, boys. Not that Fury won’t know anyway, knocking out Chicago’s power is not nearly as subtle as you seem to believe. Half of a major city’s power, Coulson! And you, Barton, breaking your foot on a fall that could have killed you if that dumpster hadn’t been there – I’m disappointed, I really am.’

 They sit there staring at their hands and let her speak. When she’s done and has dismissed them, Clint goes to medical to get his foot looked at, and Coulson ends up in the canteen with May, head on the table bemoaning his day.

* * *

_2014_

Fury shows up in the middle of the night, letting himself in and toeing off his boots and jacket in the hallway. He listens for any sound of disturbance, and then decides he’ll go to the kitchen to get himself a glass of water. He’ll go to the guest room after, cat nap until morning, and apologise for terrifying Laura the moment she’s awake. She’s used to Fury letting himself into the house now, after nearly two decades of it, but she’s still easily spooked by him appearing overnight.

Before he’s taken the five steps to get through the lounge door, Clint is calling through, ‘wondered how long it’d be. Been waiting for you.’

Fury crosses the threshold of the lounge, and finds Clint sat at the kitchen table in pitch darkness, just the moonlight catching on his silhouette to suggest he’s there.

‘What are you doing?’ Fury asks, and continues on his way to get a glass of water.

‘Oh,’ Clint says, and sighs hard through his nose. ‘Not you. Nat. What’s she doing?’

‘Clearing up a few messes,’ Fury says, ‘I would have, but you know how it is. I’m sure you got the memo before the system went down.’

Clint’s smile is not particularly genuine, nor particularly nice.

‘Did you know?’ he asks, and Fury warns him before flicking one of the cupboard lights on. ‘About HYDRA?’

‘I had suspicions,’ he replies, looks at Clint in the dim light, haggard and overtired and not broken, because Barton doesn’t break, but he’s crumbling. ‘I’m sorry, Clint. I am. If I’d had time to warn you, you know I would have.’

‘I was on a mission,’ Clint says with that bitter little sniff and curled lip. ‘Worked with them before, you know? Couple of times. Good men, good agents. Morally sound, good judgement. Had my back.’ He chuckles, bitter, licks his lips. ‘In twenty-two years, I never had to put a cap between a teammate’s eyes. Never.’

Fury is not a man for tactile comfort and false sympathies. He gets Clint one of the homemade popsicles from the freezer, a bright pink one, and Clint gives him a look. It’s a tired look, with dark circles and a haunted blue, steady and familiar but so alien. There’s a bandage around his arm, and it’s spotting with blood; his tracker, Fury thinks, and hopes he disposed of it properly.

 ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Clint says, and stares at the popsicle in his hand. ‘I – I didn’t tell Laura, about the mission. About what happened. I think she knows. She’s not stupid.’

‘She knows you too well,’ Fury says, ‘and you can barely look _me_ in the eye. We did well with you, too well, probably. You did the right thing, Agent Barton.’

Clint snorts, and shoves the popsicle in his mouth, because it means he doesn’t have to talk any more, and that’ll do him just fine for now.

They sit in silence, and Clint chews on the plastic stick, but Fury knows they’ve been chewed a hundred times over, and decides that he’ll bring them another set of moulds; clearly they’ve been using these ones too often. After a minute or so, Clint rubs his temple, looking wrung out, one of his children’s old toys, washed too many times and stitched back together a dozen times or more.

‘Is Nat alright?’ he asks, and even if she wasn’t, the look on his face makes Fury want to say yes anyway.

‘She’s fine,’ he says, ‘she’s doing PR like always, and she’s putting out word for loyal agents to regroup. We need the numbers. The Triskellion wasn’t the only place hit. The whole lot went down. The Hub and the Academy were hit. The _Iliad_ , too.’

 ‘Fucking Christ,’ Clint sighs, leans back in his chair to run his hands over his head, down his neck. His hair is shaved short again, and Fury wonders how Laura felt about her husband’s hack job. ‘The kids. They’re alright?’

Fury nods. ‘From what I’ve heard, they saved as many as they could. Calderon showed up last minute. You know how he is.’

Clint’s lip curled.

‘Bobbi?’ he asks next.

‘On the _Iliad_ , last I heard. I had her ready with Protocol ASTA06, just in case. I doubt she’s dead. She gets her stubbornness from you.’

‘Only because she could never get in my head,’ Clint laughs. ‘You know she tried? A couple of weeks ago, bumped into her in the Hub, on my way to briefing. It’s driving her mad.’

Bobbi had been trying to get into Clint’s head since the day they met, sure he had a secret, and determined to find it. All of her interrogation training couldn’t break him, because he’d had the training too, and took great delight in feeding her false information so close to the truth it itched under her skin for weeks. She hates him for it, he knows, but he won’t ever give it up. It’s practically a game now, one he’ll likely never get to play again.

‘I should have gone to the Academy,’ Clint says after the silence drags. ‘I wasn’t even a hundred miles out, I could have helped them.’

‘You did what you had to do,’ Fury tells him. ‘Coming home was the safest thing to do.’

‘It was the coward’s way out,’ Clint snaps, and knocks his chair over getting to his feet.

The clatter makes them both pause. There’s no noise from upstairs, no echo of movement to suggest someone had woken up. Clint paces around the table, yanks the back door open and goes outside to sit on the step. After a moment, Fury moves to join him, leaning on the railing and looking out over the fields and trees.

‘The lawn needs mowing,’ he says.

Clint snorts. ‘Not like I don’t have time now,’ he says, ‘got all the time in the world now, haven’t I? God, I haven’t been unemployed for _years_. I don’t even have a résumé any more. What would I even put on it? What jobs would I even apply for?’

‘You’re making this far more dramatic than it needs to be,’ Fury tells him. ‘I know as well as you do that there is an obscene amount of money in your account, and you know Tony will have your account on lockdown. HYDRA won’t be able to track it until they can bypass J.A.R.V.I.S.’

‘Nick, I am _scared_ ,’ Clint tells him, as though Fury hadn’t a clue. ‘I am _terrified_.’

Clint hasn’t admitted to being scared for years. Not even the business in Manhattan had scared him. Fury doesn’t remember the last time Clint verbally admitted to being scared. His tracker had shown it, his heart rate spiking and so on. Support had seen fear in their runner, but it had been a long time since he’d admitted it.

Just before Cooper was born, Fury thinks. That was the last time. Fear for being a father.

‘My name is out there. There are huge chunks of my file missing where it’s not missing on anyone else’s files. I’ve got no address, no home. No named next of kin. Nothing. Everything about me outside of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been wiped. If HYDRA haven’t already tried to get the redacted information, they’ll be going for it now.’

Fury gives him a look. ‘You are far more paranoid than you have to be. HYDRA had a kill-order on you, because HYDRA had kill-orders on all of us. But honestly, I don’t think you were nearly as high up the food chain as you think you were. HYDRA has more important agents to worry about than you. I had the Winter Soldier come out of wherever HYDRA was keeping him to try and off me, you had a couple of boys you can handle with your eyes shut. It’s nothing to worry about, honestly. They had you down as a lost cause from the off. Sitwell was HYDRA.’

Everything clunks into place with the dull noise of a penny in the bottom of a full glass.

‘Sitwell?’ Clint repeats. ‘Oh, God, it suddenly makes sense.’

He runs a hand over his face, rubs his mouth. His lip splits, blood welling. After wiping it away with the back of his hand, he sighs.

‘Please tell me he’s dead.’

‘He’s dead,’ Fury assures him.

They sit there in silence until the sun breaks the tree-line.

* * *

_1995_

Their first year anniversary is almost lost, which Laura thinks is really just the perfect way to describe their relationship. Almost lost. It’s not that they aren’t together, because after that _disastrous_ month apart, they haven’t even considered seeing other people, or being anything other than together. Clint doesn’t stay at his place nearly as often as he stays at hers, often coming straight to her apartment from a mission still filthy and in his uniform instead of going home – to his home, to his apartment, with its faulty shower and its gross landlord – to shower and change.

She kind of, just a little, likes that a lot.

So when she realises that their first anniversary is approaching rapidly, she panics. Does she get Clint something? Will Clint get _her_ something? Will Clint even _remember_?

He doesn’t tell her that it’s for their anniversary, he just calls her from Beirut and tells her to be at Giovanni’s in her prettiest dress for seven p.m. Laura does not fret any less, and asks Bunny what to get him.

‘I can’t tell you that,’ Bunny laughs. ‘I’m not his girlfriend. You know him better than me, darling, you can think of something. What does he do a lot of?’

‘Sleep,’ Laura grumbles.

As she climbs the stairs, it hits her like a brick wall.

‘Travelling,’ she whispers, and takes the stairs two at a time.

She’s out of breath when she gets back to her apartment, but she slams through the door, spooks the dog and pauses briefly to apologise with a nice ear rub for him, before hurrying through to her purse.

‘I’m not going to be long,’ she promises to Lucky, giving him another belly rub and checking that his food and water are good before kissing his head. ‘I gotta get your dad a present.’

He bumps his cold nose against her chin and she laughs, locks up before taking the elevator down.

It takes her two hours to find a jewellery store that even _stocks_ what she wants, never mind something she likes. But she’s left it late, and the stores are closing. Still, she thinks, still, she’s got a few days. She can look during her lunch hour the rest of the week. She’ll find something.

And she does, has it gift-wrapped nice and neat, tied with a bow, and it doesn’t look much. But it _means_ more. She hopes, as she presses a lipstick kiss to the wrapping just before she heads to Giovanni’s, that he likes it.

His box does not have a lipstick kiss on it. It doesn’t have a bow or any fancy wrapping. It just has the name of the jeweller on it, something in German, maybe, that she doesn’t understand. It’s probably a name. She looks at it, looks at him. His ears are pink, and she eventually chuckles, digs into her handbag to get his box, tosses it across the table to him; there’s no way he won’t catch it.

Fumbling with it, he sets it down, waits.

‘You waiting for something?’ she asks.

‘You,’ he says, smiles soft. ‘Open it.’

It takes her a moment to work out the catch, sliding it to the side to pop the box.

‘Is this gold?’ she gasps.

‘Do you not like gold?’ he asks, and she glances up to find him pale, eyes wide.

‘I _love_ gold,’ she laughs, catching on a breath. ‘But God, Clint, gold is _expensive_.’

He breathes a sigh, leans back in his chair. ‘Oh, thank God, I was worried there. So you like it?’

She laughs, breathless, giddy. Her mother’s new man bought her a pair of gold earrings for her twenty-first, cute little studs that she’s only worn a few times, terrified she’ll lose them. They’re the only solid gold she owns.

‘I love it,’ she assures him, and pulls the bracelet from the box.

A thick herringbone strap, and he knows her wrist measurement, because when she offers it to him to put it on for her, not wanting to ruin her nails by fiddling with the lobster claw,  it fits perfectly, snug enough to not fall too dramatically either way, but not too snug that it doesn’t move at all. It compliments her delicate little wrist perfectly, and when she looks up at him watching her, his fingertips still brushing her palm, she abruptly jerks to her feet and leans over the table to smash her mouth into his.

When she lets him go, he’s wearing more of her lipstick than she is, and there are the beginnings of that familiar leer creeping into the curve of his smile. Dropping back into her chair, she wipes her lip with a finger, and gestures at the pretty box still on his place setting.

‘Go on, then,’ she says, as though she hadn’t just kissed the life out of him, ‘open it.’

It takes him a moment to shake his brain back into functioning normally, and then he’s taking a breath, turning his attention to the box. As he picks the bow open, carefully unwrapping the paper and he’s being so careful to not tear it, Laura has a moment of doubt. This bracelet must have cost a couple hundred bucks easily, something Swiss and expensive and she’ll have to look at the hallmarks later when she can grasp that she is wearing solid gold around her wrist like it’s nothing. What she got for Clint is nowhere near as extravagant.

‘Saint Christopher?’ he asks, and his eyes are so blue when he glances up through his lashes.

The pendant is small in his palm, barely the size of a nickel, and okay, the silver sets off his skin _wonderfully_ , but still. She swallows, and nods.

‘Yeah, I thought – you travel so much, you know? Always jetting off. I thought, well I figured it’d keep you safe. Get you home.’

She offers him a smile, small and unsure, and his smile blisters before he echoes her and lunges across the table.


	10. A Particularly Aggressive Tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warning for anxiety attacks, ptsd and emotional fallout and casual reference to murder

_1995_

‘I was – I was thirteen,’ Clint says, ‘when I joined the circus.’

‘I still can’t believe you were in the circus,’ Laura snorts, and shifts to lie down on the couch, head on his lap and ankles crossed on the arm. Her hair spills across his legs, and he plays with it, idly.

‘Me and my brother, Barney, we ran away from our foster home. It was – eighty-four? Yeah, eighty-four. Big Brother wasn’t something we were worried about back then.’

It takes Laura a moment, and she laughs when she gets the reference. ‘I suppose not,’ she says, ‘I doubt he could get into a circus.’

He grins at her, and she smiles back up at him, reaches up to thumb his cheek.

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ she says, ‘I don’t need to know.’

‘I want you to know,’ he replies, and turns his head to kiss her palm.

She smiles some more, settles her neck against his thigh and tells him to take his time, then.

‘I’ve got all day, honey. I’ll listen for as long as you want to talk.’

So he talks. He glosses over his family, over what happened to his parents – ‘there was an accident. He drove them into a ditch,’ is all he says – and he refuses to talk about the foster homes.

‘We were young. I was young. We’d been in the system for long enough I could barely remember being at home before we ran away. It’s weird, the older I get, the more I feel like I remember. Maybe I’m over it, I don’t know. I remember more about Dad now than I did then.’

 Laura nods. ‘You’ve got a clearer mind now. It was a tough time.’

‘Tough,’ he scoffs, ‘sure thing. It was – hard.’

She rests her hand on his neck, feels his heart pounding against her palm and thumbs his jaw.

‘Don’t,’ she tells him. ‘Stop talking, honey.’

He breathes deep, shuts his eyes, and his heart begins to slow. When his eyes open, blue and beautiful and a little redder than before, she’s smiling, proud, honest, _loving_. He swallows thickly, and her thumb twists to brush feather-light over his Adam’s apple.

‘My favourite bit,’ she teases, and he swallows again, offers her a shaky smile.

‘We started as roustabouts,’ he says, ‘doing odd chores, the heavy lifting. Cleaning out the cages and fixing broken props, that kind of thing.’

Her eyes dart to his bow, propped up against the wall with a quiver of purple fletched arrows.

‘When did you get that?’ she asks, ‘if you were a baby janitor?’

He chuckles, and she falls in love with the sound.

‘There were a couple of performers – fantastic aim, used to do the knife-throwing and shooting tricks, you know? – they were – I don’t know, I don’t _hate_ them?’ He shrugs, looks a little lost for a second, and she supposes she wouldn’t know how to feel either. ‘The one, Swordsman – that was his stage name, real name was Jacques – he did the knife-throwing. One night, he dumped all his shit on me. I don’t remember what Barney was doing, cleaning something else from one of the sideshows, I guess, but I had all these knives. We’d been there, five, maybe six months? I don’t think I’d turned fourteen yet, but I lost track of time so quick there. Didn’t know I was nineteen until I saw a calendar.’

She laughs, and pushes herself upright to kiss him, whispering a fond, ‘you dummy,’ against his mouth. He chases when she backs away, but she flicks his nose and settles back on his lap, and he tilts his head back, stares at the ceiling. For a moment, he’s quiet, and she just admires the arch of his throat and the curve of his jaw. He needs a shave again.

‘But I had all these knives, and he wanted me to sharpen them, right? So, God, I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea, but I figured, well I’ve sharpened them, I better make sure they’re balanced. If they weren’t balanced right, they could have killed someone, you know? The aim has to be so perfect, to the millimetre, or someone’ll sever an artery and the whole operation would go under. Couldn’t have that. I was still being – indoctrinated, I guess. Learning the way the world worked. Or the way _their_ world worked.’

Laura nods.

‘So I tried them out, one by one. Flung ‘em at the board, tried to aim where Jacques had thrown ‘em.’

‘Tried,’ Laura scoffs.

His head straightens again, and he looks proud when he says, ‘didn’t miss a single one.’

She matches his smile with a beaming grin of her own. It’s about the only part of himself that he takes any pride in, his aim. She’s proud of him for everything else, but that’s all him, and she’s proud of that, too.

‘Jacques saw, of course, as if he’d let some thirteen-year-old little shit fuck about with his knives with no training. So he saw, and he saw me hit the mark with every one of these knives, and he said, why not train under him to take over if he had to be elsewhere? I didn’t know it then, but there was shady shit going on. Real shady. If I’d had a pair big enough, I’d have gone to the cops there and then. But I was young, so fucking young, and I’d lost everything ‘cept Barney. Even Barney was slipping. Looking back on it now, he hated the circus, he only stayed as long as he did because of me. And I hated him for leaving me, _Christ_! Whatever. What’s done is done.’

Laura does not think his relationship with his brother, painful as it is, is something to dismiss, but it’s his story.

‘He had the chance to train under them too, you know? Swordsman and Trickshot. He had the chance for that. But he turned it down. I used to try and convince him. Used to tell him all these ridiculous dreams I had about a double act we could have had, doing cool tricks with knives and arrows and whatever we could lay our hands on. But he wouldn’t have it.’

For a few moments, he falls silent, and Laura watches him thinking about those dreams he used to have. She wonders if he still has them now, and asks, quiet. His fingers go still in her hair.

‘I don’t remember them if I do,’ he says, ‘I don’t think I really dream anymore.’

He’s a filthy liar, but she’ll let him have it.

‘Still,’ he says, with an idle shrug. ‘I got all this out of the circus. I got a job, I got this place. I got you. That’s more than enough.’

She laughs and pinches his belly. ‘You sap,’ she says, fond.

He looks unapologetic.

‘So Jacques started training me, and I was his assistant for a couple of months, and then Buck – that’s Trickshot – he took me on, ‘cause I was better with a bow. I told him how me and Barney used to throw rocks at Dad’s bottles, when we weren’t at the shop, used to make slingshots out of elastic bands and broken shoelaces, whatever we could get our hands on.’

‘Shop?’ Laura asks, because she must have missed that one.

‘Dad was a butcher,’ Clint says, and something dark crosses his face. ‘Back in Waverly. Used to be super popular, but Waverly’s small. Not tiny, but small. Less than ten-thousand people. I don’t remember the census for the seventies, but it must have been less.’

‘That sounds a lot, though. Ten thousand is still a big number.’

‘New York’s eight-mil,’ Clint shrugs and Laura goes a bit green.

‘It must have felt like you knew everyone,’ she says, and Clint’s jaw tightens.

‘None of ‘em thought to make a noise against Dad, though,’ he says, and sighs hard.

She pinches his belly again, tells him to talk about something else.

‘Where did Hawkeye come from?’ she asks, ‘why Hawkeye? Why not Trickshot, if you were going to take over?’

‘Because, as it turned out, Trickshot was a piece of shit.’

‘You sounded fond of him,’ Laura says, frown wrinkling her pretty little nose, and Clint taps it with a fingertip, smoothes the wrinkles out. She tries not to smile, but she can’t help herself.

‘I was fond of him,’ he nods, ‘and I still am, in a way. I’ve got fond memories of training, of all the hijinks. Is that the word? I don’t know – it was fun, I guess. It felt good, like I was – it felt like a purpose. Like I’d found my calling.’

He laughs then. ‘What a calling to have, though, shooting a bow and arrow in a circus. Thank God there aren’t any photos of my outfits. I think I might get retroactively arrested for public indecency.’

‘Retroactively,’ she scoffs, and he tugs a lock of hair, gentle, so as not to hurt her.

‘Look, when someone sets off a firework in the street and it sounds like a gunshot, of course I’m going out there. Me forgetting to put some pants on doesn’t make a difference.’

 She laughs, and he smiles, watches her for a few moments.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘that I’m doing this.’

‘Doing what? Talking? Honey, I’m so flattered that you are! That you’re telling me about you and your past. I’m flattered, I really am. If you want to stop, you can, you don’t owe me anything more.’

He squints, and then laughs, breathless. It’s not a very happy laugh, and she pushes up again, wriggles her way into his lap to loop her arms around his neck and kiss him into complacency.

‘You don’t owe me anything, Clint Barton,’ she whispers, bumps their noses together. ‘I won’t breathe a word of this to another soul, you know that. But if you want to stop, I won’t ask any more questions.’

‘You deserve to know,’ he tells her, ‘if you’re – if we’re serious about this, about us, I want you to know. It’s only fair that you know.’

‘Clint, you’re a former circus performer turned petty criminal turned world security guard, I honestly, _honestly_ , don’t need to know any more than that if you don’t want to tell me.’

His lips thin, frown forming in the crease between his eyebrows, and Laura tilts his head down to press a kiss to it, working her way down the flat arch of his nose and to his mouth, where the only word he says after is a soft, ‘okay.’

* * *

_2015_

It’s not often that Clint can’t orientate himself within ten paces of entering a building, but he’s absolutely positive that Steve is secretly changing the layout of Avengers HQ every time he turns his back. He’d made it to the filing room with little trouble, but trying to get back out was the issue. He’d thought of maybe swinging by the canteen and having lunch with Wanda, who had said she would be there if he had time to spare before heading back, and he has plenty.

Five corridors and one armoury later, he bumps into Sam.

‘Oh, thank God,’ Clint huffs with relief.

Sam looks vaguely thrilled to be greeted so enthusiastically. Mostly confused.

‘You alright, man?’

‘Lost as all hell. Show me to the canteen, would you?’

Sam points back the way Clint had come, and they start walking, making idle chatter. Sam is eager to learn more about the other Avengers – Steve and Nat, he knows well, counts as his closest friends, and of course he knows his teammates – but the others are mostly hearsay and snippets of conversation at parties and press conferences and public relations.

‘You kinda disappeared,’ Sam laughs, ‘Steve made a joke – believe it or not – that you left faster than Thor did, and that guy can move.’

‘Yeah,’ Clint says with a shift of his shoulders, fingers curling in his jacket pockets. ‘Yeah, I had some – stuff – to take care of. I – I had Wanda, you know? Had to look after her.’

‘You did really well,’ Sam says then, grin slipping into something more serene, sincerity plain on his face. ‘She’s – I didn’t know her before, obviously, but you’ve worked with her. I – I used to do that, for a living. Did Steve say?’

Steve has been singing Sam’s praises for months, so yes, Steve did say. Honestly, for a man that can’t get drunk, he can certainly babble like one.

‘I think he mentioned it once or twice,’ Clint says, ‘PTSD and Vets and that. Wish I’d known you were there after Manhattan. Could have done with an ear or two.’

Sam nods, sage. ‘Yeah, yeah, Nat’s mentioned you a couple of times. All good stuff! But yeah, she said you had a hard time after Manhattan. Wish I could have helped.’

Clint smiles, nods.

‘I’m alright now,’ he says, and when Sam looks at him, eyes him hard, Clint laughs. ‘Honestly, I’m still a bit shaky at times. Still get the nightmares. But it’s not any worse than any other nightmare I’ve had, you know? You’ve seen shit too, it’s no worse than you’d expect.’

‘If you need me – ‘ Sam starts, and Clint nudges him with an elbow.

‘Honestly,’ he says, ‘I’m fine.’

Sam eyes him some more, and then the air lightens, and he changes the topic to something more palatable; vacation.

‘Steve’s demanding I take a couple of weeks off,’ Sam says, as though this is the worst news.

‘I’d have killed for a couple of weeks off,’ Clint grumbles.

Sam ignores him. ‘I mean, I don’t _mind_ the time off, it’d be nice to not have to get up at the ass crack of dawn every day, but where am I even going to _go_?’

‘Hawaii?’ Clint asks. ‘Mali – actually, no, not Malibu. Spain? Portugal? Some remote island Tony would probably buy for you if you got Nat to ask him?’

‘You saying I can’t bat my eyelashes?’

Clint ignores him. ‘Seriously, you could go anywhere you wanted. Just point at a map and go there.’

 Sam huffs. ‘I want to take my wings with me. Get some free practice in, you know? But I ain’t getting them through airport security.’

 Clint supposes not. Without thinking – no, no, _with_ thinking, it’s just the thought is so fast he’s already speaking before he’s finished it – he says, ‘I know a spot.’

Steve trusts him, Clint reasons. Steve trusts him and Nat likes him, and at the end of the day, Sam is a good man. That’s all Clint needs to offer his land. There’d be plenty of space for him to fly, and he’s sure the kids would love to see Falcon up close, the way they love seeing everyone their dad and Aunty Nat work with.

(Lila has already asked no less than fifteen times if the upcoming Falcon action figure with moveable wings and alternate heads has been released. Clint needs to check; if it’s out, she’ll never forgive him for going home without it. Laura says she doesn’t need another one, but she has all the others, she might as well have the Falcon one to complete the set.)

There’s a second before Sam stops walking, his face lighting up. Clint is reminded, as he finds himself smiling at Falcon’s enthusiasm, that he is not quite (quite!) as young as he once was. By no means, these days, is forty-something even remotely old. He’s still able to do everything he could ten years ago, without falter and mostly without his joints complaining, but he’s older now, wiser. Getting your brain wiped and all the rest will do that to you, he supposes. He’s seen shit, and shit has seen him.

‘Really?’ Sam asks, ‘oh, man, where is it? Do I gotta fly out, get permission, do I need co-ordinates or is it on a map?’

Laughing, Clint digs in his pockets for his phone.

‘No, yes, yes, no,’ Clint says, ‘let me ask permission, and then I’ll take you.’

He dials Laura’s number – saved now, since there’s no need to hide it from the people who’ll see his phone, and Tony had long since made sure it was safe from hackers – and holds the phone to his ear.

‘Hello, honey,’ Laura says when she answers, and then hums, ‘you’re calling earlier than I expected.’

‘Hey, yeah,’ he replies, kicks his toes against the carpeting. ‘Yeah, I’m – I’m with Sam.’

Laura takes a second. ‘That’s – Falcon, right? With the wings? Steve’s friend.’

‘Yeah, that’s the one. I’m – am I alright to bring him home with me?’

‘You aren’t adopting another one!’ Laura laughs, and then apologises, cooing soft. ‘Sorry, I’m feeding Nathaniel.’

Clint has to bite his tongue to avoid cooing at his son, because Sam cannot hear Laura’s end of the phone, and would have no context for Clint suddenly baby-talking without warning.

‘But that’s fine,’ she says after she’s done laughing. ‘We need some more bread, and some – give me half an hour, I’ll make a list and send it to you.’

Clint nods, assures her he’ll swing by on his way home.

‘And make sure you get a dessert Sam likes, too,’ Laura adds. ‘And not just something he likes. His favourite. Or find out his favourite, and tell me and I can make it.’

‘Sam?’ Clint asks, ‘what’s your favourite dessert?’

God, he has to look up – _up!_ \- at all these assholes, this is so unfair.

‘Um,’ Sam says, helpfully. ‘Um. I – I guess carrot cake?’

‘Carrot cake,’ Clint relays into the phone, and Laura hums.

‘I think I’ve got everything, but I’ll let you know. Text me when you head out, okay?’

 ‘I will,’ Clint assures her, ‘and I’ll text when we hit state border.’

It’s another two hours driving from there, plus however long they spend in the store – Clint prefers showing up in the middle of the night, because there’s less chance of people recognising him when they’re all half-asleep and uninterested in the forty-something man in the check shirt buying an emergency list of groceries, but Laura will want to make sure that Sam is fed once he’s through the door, and it’s not fair on the kids to keep them up.

‘Alright,’ she says, ‘don’t push yourself to get home at a reasonable hour. Take your time, okay? It’s not an issue if you show up in the middle of the night, you know. Sam seems a reasonable guy.’

‘Stop reading my mind,’ Clint grumbles.

‘Stop thinking out loud,’ Laura teases. ‘You weren’t thinking out loud; don’t wrinkle your nose like that.’

Clint unwrinkles his nose, and squints into the middle-distance.

‘Be careful,’ he says after a moment, and he can _hear_ her smile.

‘Take your own advice,’ she replies, and hangs up.

He smiles at his phone for a second, and then looks up at Sam, whose own nose is wrinkled in confusion.

‘You got permission,’ he says with a shrug. ‘Come on, I’m starving, where’s that canteen?’

* * *

_2014_

‘Mr Barton?’

Clint rolls over, blinks at the sudden light, shields his eyes to give them chance to adjust. The – the – honestly, he has no idea what to call it. It’s like a transceiver or some shit. He doesn’t know. It’s the middle of the night.

‘What is it?’ he asks, gravelly with cotton-thick sleep, and J.A.R.V.I.S. dims the light coming from the device to give Clint’s eyes a break. His room is pitch-black otherwise.

‘I would like to ask you a question.’

‘Can it wait?’

‘Mr Stark is asleep,’ J.A.R.V.I.S. says, ‘for the first time in a while. I can block him from listening in on this conversation, but if he were to look, he would see. I am only a program, Mr Barton, I cannot stop him from breaking in.’

Clint sits up, rubs his eyes and tells the AI to put the light on. He stretches and grumbles to himself as J.A.R.V.I.S. eases the lights to a reasonable level, just bright enough for Clint to see by. His room is a mess, but it always is. He likes it like this. Nat, when she’s here, doesn’t complain, picks her way through the mess as though she’s done so her whole life. J.A.R.V.I.S. is sure there is more between them than they’ll ever admit aloud.

‘Shoot,’ Clint says, and gets to his feet to do some idle lunges and stretches, easing out the cramp that comes from his sleep being disturbed.

‘I have noticed that you are – keeping a secret from the others.’

‘Ugh, really, man? I’m not.’

J.A.R.V.I.S. has clearly been spending too much time with Nat, because Clint can _feel_ him rolling his eyes, can feel the droll expression being sent his way in the back of his throat. No, wait, that’s pillow fibres. Clearing his throat, he flops onto his bed, elbows on his knees, and rubs his face.

‘Be a little more specific,’ he says with a sigh. ‘What secret am I keeping?’

J.A.R.V.I.S. considers it.

‘You have trouble sleeping,’ he says, ‘more than you admit to the others. I have noticed, in observation of your sleeping habits, that there are specific periods where you sleep better. You were not sleeping well tonight.’

Clint looks at the pillow, unlit with no throb of Laura’s heartbeat.

‘No,’ he agrees, ‘no, I suppose not. Come on, J.A.R.V.I.S., this ain’t a question, and it might have been shit, but at least it was sleep, yeah? Spit it out.’

‘Would you like me to improve the balance of your room to aid your sleep?’

‘English, please, it’s like – it’s – dude, it’s almost three a.m., do we have to do this now?’

J.A.R.V.I.S. lingers for a moment, as if unsure how to proceed.

‘I would like you to sleep well,’ he hedges after the moment has passed. ‘And if there is a method by which I can help improve it, I would like to do so.’

‘Why do you care?’ Clint grunts, and with a half-hearted scrub of his hair, crawls back into bed, burying himself under too many covers to be comfortable.

He shoves his hand into the pocket, wristband connecting with the sensor, and he gets as comfortable as he can with sweat already prickling at his brow. J.A.R.V.I.S. says nothing for a long minute or three, and eventually, Clint begins drifting off again, figuring that he was gone.

‘They care,’ J.A.R.V.I.S. tells his half-asleep form, lowering the temperature in the room to give Clint more comfort beneath the mound of blankets. Why he has so many in the first place is baffling, but the man deserves the few comforts he takes when he is so uncomfortable the rest of the time. ‘All of them. They worry about you.’

‘Funny way of showing it,’ Clint grumbles. ‘Go away, please. I want to try and get some sleep.’

J.A.R.V.I.S. apologises, and Clint figures he’s been left alone for real this time, curls up tighter around the pillow. Laura is still not here, and his fingers itch. He could call her. Make sure she’s alright. He’s sure she is, she’s probably just unable to sleep, is all. Maybe one of the hawkbabies is ill, struggling with the heat. It’s not like her to not tell him.

‘Mr Barton?’ J.A.R.V.I.S. starts. ‘Please breathe. I do not wish to wake Miss Natasha, but if you are not well, I will not hesitate.’

‘I’m – I’m okay,’ Clint heaves, and shoves the blankets away to get upright for a second time.

He staggers to the bathroom, and J.A.R.V.I.S. follows, communication line already open in Miss Natasha’s room, even if he hasn’t said a word yet.

‘I’m okay.’

‘You will forgive me if I am dubious about that fact,’ J.A.R.V.I.S. says. ‘I am familiar with anxiety attacks, Mr Barton. Mr Stark had them regularly for a time.’

‘I ain’t Tony,’ Clint says, because Tony doesn’t know _shit_ about anxiety attacks.

It’s harsh, it’s unfair. Clint knows he isn’t the only man in the world to ever lose control of his most basic bodily functions like, you know, breathing. As he sprawls out next to the toilet, periodically heaving and hoping for the best, he figures that maybe he should have talked to Tony earlier, should have spent time with him. Clint knows anxiety like he knows Laura’s heartbeat, and it would be easy to talk to him, to talk him through it.

It would have been so easy, because Clint has known anxiety for forty years, he’s known the agony of it, and every day he doesn’t miss a target – because he never misses, that’s the point, he is here through his ability to _not_ be a total mess – is a day he counts his blessings, because god knows the moment his bow is out of his hands, they’re unsteady to the point of tremor.

‘Christ,’ he breathes, and then tosses a few uglier words into the toilet bowl too for good measure.

‘Mr Barton?’ J.A.R.V.I.S. asks. ‘Do I need to get Miss Natasha?’

‘I need my phone,’ Clint replies, absent, and tries to shove himself upright but can’t get his feet under him. He manages to get them under him, but he can’t keep them there, and crashes back to the tiles with a pained groan, throws up the last dregs of breakfast, since dinner is long gone.

J.A.R.V.I.S. returns to Natasha’s room, still present with Clint, and still watching the others too. Bruce is awake, legs folded and fingers curled, lost in thought. J.A.R.V.I.S. wonders what he’s thinking of.

Nat is face-first in her bed, blankets twisted and visible legs prettily pale.

‘Miss Natasha?’ he asks, gentle.

She’s awake and on her feet before the last syllable has left his speaker.

‘What is it?’ she asks, scraping her hair out of her face and tying as much of it back as she can; short hair is not very good for that, J.A.R.V.I.S. has learnt. ‘Is everything alright?’

‘Mr Barton requires your aid,’ he says, ‘he is having an anxiety attack and keeps asking for his phone.’

Nat is already at the door, her phone in hand. ‘Where is he?’

‘Second bathroom,’ J.A.R.V.I.S. says, and lights the way, though he knows Nat doesn’t need it.

He notices, as she begins dialling a number from memory, that it is the same number Clint dials from memory, the one he owns but is always answered by a pretty-sounding woman called Laura.

‘He needs you,’ Nat says as soon as the call is answered, and shoves the phone against Clint’s ear.

Clint talks, quiet, and J.A.R.V.I.S. chooses to ignore the conversation he can hear, as Nat hauls him to his feet and begins the trek back to his room, taking most of his weight on her shoulder.

‘Your breath stinks,’ she tells him, but she sounds fond.

His pillow is illuminated when they get back to it, and Clint wobbles in Nat’s arms, giddy, perhaps.

‘Down we go,’ Nat hums, helps him collapse onto the mattress. He’s utterly limp, and she rolls her eyes. ‘He’s useless,’ she calls to the phone. ‘You’ve broken him.’

Laura’s laughter is audible even without J.A.R.V.I.S’s audio levels.

Getting Clint tucked in is the easiest part of the endeavour, and she asks if she needs him to stay.

‘Naw,’ he breathes, reverential, shoving his wristband into the pocket and resting his head just right. ‘Naw, I think she’s got it.’

Nat nods, leans down to kiss his temple.

‘Try and sleep,’ she tells him. ‘Goodnight, both of you.’

He smiles blearily at her, sleep already hitting him like a wall, and Nat creeps out back to her own room.

‘Keep an eye on him, J.A.R.V.I.S.?’

‘Of course, Miss Natasha. I apologise for waking you.’

She smiles, assures him that it’s fine, that she would have wanted to be woken, and then she’s heading back to her room, fingers trailing silk-soft across the wall as she goes. He cannot feel it, but he appreciates the sentiment.

Clint is almost entirely asleep now, still listening to the phone, replying to something Laura says every now and then. J.A.R.V.I.S. thinks this kind of love is the sweetest. Not even Pepper can calm Tony down this easily.

After a few more minutes of idle watching, Clint is seconds from falling asleep. J.A.R.V.I.S. has found the coding for Clint’s room and fiddles with it. Slowly, the audio bounces differently, and the heartbeat audible from the pillow comes to fill the room, a quiet, familiar sound that makes Clint smile. Dimming the light coming from the pillow is impossible without getting to the wiring inside, so he leaves it, balances the darkness instead, keeps the lights on just low enough to suck some of the light from the pillow, so it doesn’t hurt his eyes so much. Clint has said many times that he has slept in some terrible locations, and indeed, has managed to fall asleep standing in broad daylight. Against a night-light is hardly the worst place for him to have his head.

He starts snoring a few moments later, and J.A.R.V.I.S. checks to see if Laura has hung up. She, too, is snoring, softer than her partner, but she’s asleep too. He decides to leave the line connected and goes to see what Bruce is doing.

* * *

_2015_

They arrive in the middle of the night. Clint trips over his seatbelt. Sam stays where he is and covers his mouth to laugh.

‘Shut up,’ Clint hisses. ‘Shut up. You wake the kids, I wake you.’

‘That makes no sense,’ Sam hisses back, but obligingly gets out of the car to go to the boot and get his pack out. ‘Wait, kids?’

The front bedroom light flicks on, illuminating three windows, and the leftmost window’s curtains open, prompting both of them to pause and look up. Laura looks at them, raises a hand, and disappears.

Sam looks at Clint. Clint grabs one of the bags and moves to the steps. Sam grabs the rest and hastens to follow. The door is opening by the time they reach the steps, and Laura steps out into the moonlight, hair a mess and pyjamas twisted. Sam is – well, he’s honestly not surprised by the appearance of a wife, because Clint is not nearly as subtle as he thinks he is, but he wasn’t expecting his wife to be as pretty as she is.

Clint hauls himself up the steps to kiss her before Laura is passing him, barefoot, to come and help Sam with the bags.

‘I’m Laura,’ she says, with a pretty, but tired smile. ‘You must be Sam.’

He blinks, obligingly opens his fingers when she tugs at a bag. ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘yeah, that’s me. Sam Wilson. Hi.’

‘Hi,’ she beams, claps his arm, and pads back to the house.

Clint is waiting for her, already grumbling about her going across the path barefoot, and Laura immediately talks over him, telling him to go and help Sam and not be a total ass.

Clint comes back to the car with a shake of his head, takes the last of the bags and asks if Sam’s alright to just carry his pack. Nodding, he lowers the boot, and Clint locks it with a beep of the key. The house smells of camomile and unlit, moonlight filtering through the net and open curtains to give them enough light to see by.

‘I set the camp bed up,’ Laura whispers, leading them through to the kitchen, where the wider windows gave them a little more light, quickly joined by the opened fridge, where she was storing the groceries Clint and Sam had dawdled around in Iowa City collecting. ‘The babies don’t know you’re bringing anyone home.’

Clint nods, puts the bread away, and leaves her to it, ushering Sam back through the hallway to the other set of French doors, where, as Laura had said, there was a camp bed, piled high with pillows and blankets.

‘It can get cold,’ Clint whispers, and pads silently to a table lamp, easing it off the cabinet to put it on the floor by the bed, flicking it on and bathing the room in the soft reddish glow of the shade. ‘But there should be enough blankets. There’s a toilet through the far door. If you need more blankets, they’re in the cupboard under the stairs.’

He looks around the room, and as Sam sets his pack down in the corner, goes and picks up an untidy stack of drawings. Sam can barely see them, but recognises Clint in them, as well as Steve and the other Avengers.

‘Oh,’ Clint says, and he looks almost ridiculous with a toy rabbit in his other hand, ‘kids are up at seven. I’ll be up before them, so I’ll try and keep them quiet, but they haven’t mastered the art of not throwing themselves down the stairs. Is there anything I haven’t covered?’

Kids, Sam thinks. Plural. He has more than one child. He definitely doesn’t think about the fact that Clint Barton has had sex more than once.

Sam looks around, shakes his head. ‘No, I think that’s it.’

‘Alright, I’ll see you in the morning.’

‘See you in the morning.’

Clint shuts the doors behind him and his shadow disappears. Sam sits on the camp bed and begins taking off his boots when there’s a sudden, ‘Lucky, for _fuck sake_.’

‘Language!’ Laura hisses, but she’s trying not to laugh.

Clint comes back through the doors.

‘By the way,’ he whispers, but he’s clearly struggling to keep his voice down, looking exasperated. His shirt is soaked. ‘I have an absolute _idiot_ of a dog.’

‘You love the dog,’ Laura calls, quiet, just loud enough to be heard.

‘I do _not_ love the dog,’ Clint tells Sam, and nods to him. ‘Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’

He shuts the doors again. Sam waits until he hears both Clint and Laura creep upstairs before he starts laughing.

* * *

_2014_

Clint doesn’t so much park the car as he does crash it into the fence, and Laura jumps the steps to crash into him as he strides towards her.

‘Are you alright?’ she asks, hands everywhere, patting him down for injuries, before settling on his face.

‘I’m fine,’ he tells her, knocks their brows together when he lurches forward, and she pushes back, knots a hand into his hair to drag him in. ‘I’m fine. I’m fine.’

She yanks him inside, and he lets go only to slam the door and lock it.

‘The kids?’ he asks.

‘Inside,’ she tells him, ‘I made them come in as soon as the news broke. They’re in the kitchen.’

‘Hawks?’ he calls.

‘Dad!’ they yell back, and he meets them in the middle, sweeps them into his arms, holds them tight.

They cling, because they’ve seen the news too, and Dad’s home, he’s okay, but everything else isn’t really okay at all. But it’ll _be_ okay, they’re sure, because Dad always makes things okay. S.H.I.E.L.D. is down, it’s all over the news, HYDRA are back – and Lila had filled Cooper and Laura in on all of the things about HYDRA they didn’t know but she did – and that means Dad is not in a good position right now. He’s in danger, Lila says, because HYDRA will be looking for him. He’s too cool, she says, and they know he’s too good to join them. Dad will fight them, and win, though, because Dad never loses.

He didn’t lose again Loki, he won’t lose against HYDRA.

Clint buries his face first in Cooper’s shoulder and then in Lila’s hair, breathes in the smell of them, sun-warm skin and cotton, shampoo and soap and homemade lemonade, and he feels his throat itch.

‘I’m okay,’ he tells them, pressing a hard kiss to Lila’s crown, ‘I’m home, it’ll be alright.’

Lila presses a kiss to his cheek, and Cooper squeezes tight before they’re backing away, giving him space to get back to his feet and glance – and get caught by – the TV screen. He heaves a sigh, brow creasing in – in – there are too many emotions. Swallowing thickly, he rests his hand on Lila’s head when she comes to stand at his hip, pressing as close as she can with his mission gear still attached to him, and rests the other arm around Cooper’s shoulders when he slips in on his other side. Laura ruffles his hair as she skirts around him and returns from the kitchen with a glass of lemonade. He looks at her, and she offers him a smile.

There’s a shot of _something_ in there, he can smell it before it’s even in his hand, and he gives her one of those crooked, grateful looks before necking the glass. She takes it from him, shucks his chin and disappears back into the kitchen. After a minute or so, the kids have enough of staring at the screen and return to what they were doing before. Making something, or colouring, or staring into space. Clint doesn’t know. Doesn’t really care. So long as they’re occupied with something not worrying about him or S.H.I.E.L.D. or their Grandpa Nick and Aunty Nat. He doesn’t care.

Laura takes the place of the kids, wraps herself around him and holds him right, already unbuckling straps before he’s even reacted to her pressing close.

‘What are you going to do?’ she asks, and he tears his eyes from the screen, looks at her.

‘Right now or long-term? I don’t know. I can’t call anyone, because I don’t know who I _can_ call. Nat and Steve are obviously out of reach, what with that.’ He gestures, vaguely, at the screen, and obligingly puts his arms behind him so she can peel his Kevlar vest off, leaving him in the undershirt. ‘Long-term, I’ll have to wait until Nat comes back, until she can fill me in on what’s been going on. Long-term, we’ll see. Right now, I need to shower. I was – I was on a mission. When the attacks started. I got back as soon as I could. Support went offline, and it wasn’t – it wasn’t from our end. So something had happened. We got told about HYDRA, and I made for home as soon as I had a clear shot.’

Laura nods a little, starts unbuckling his belt and pulling off the attachments. He doesn’t need them at the house, already has one Hawkeye uniform and one full S.H.I.E.L.D. kit in the walk-in. This will live next to it, she supposes. Avengers business only from now on.

‘Right now, I need to shower,’ he repeats, and she tugs him in for another long, wonderful kiss, holding it until his shoulders slacken and he doesn’t look quite so wired, and then she’s sending him on his way.

‘Call me if you need me,’ she says, and he nods, gives her a quick kiss to the nose, and clomps off up the stairs.

She watches him go. He’s got the tremors in his fingertips again.

Laura sits with the kids, helps them with their crafts, and sits there for the next twenty minutes. Clint is never normally so long in the shower, and she knows he doesn’t need to shave, because he’d not had even a shadow.

 ‘Keep an eye on the field,’ she tells them, ‘just in case Aunty Nat comes home.’

As she gets halfway up the stairs, there’s a muffled yell, pained, and she throws herself up the rest, crashing into the master bedroom and their en-suite’s door. Locked.

‘Clint?’ she asks, ‘Clint, open the door.’

He pulls it open, and she throws her hands up at the stench of blood.

‘What the _hell_?’ she asks, shoving him back and getting into the bathroom with him.

He’s got a huge hole gouged in his forearm, blood everywhere, a real mess.

‘Clint, for God’s sake!’

‘I had to get the tracker out,’ he says, opens the palm for his uninjured arm, shows her the device. It’s barely bigger than a nanoSIM, about as flat. ‘They can _track_ me, Laura. I don’t know who had access to it. I don’t know if they were HYDRA. It’s only supposed to be active during missions, to keep me on the radar. S.H.I.E.L.D. never runs the trackers on its agents when they don’t need to.’

She stares at him. ‘How long did you have that?’ she asks, ‘get rid of it now. Down the toilet, flush it.’

‘Before we got married?’ he shrugs, doing as she says, ‘I don’t know, it was done when I was out once. Lost me on the field, almost didn’t find me for extraction. Thought it was safer than not being able to track me at all. We don’t carry external trackers, they’re too easy to lose or break.’

Laura supposes there’s a lot of things that S.H.I.E.L.D. did made more sense now that they knew who was behind it.

‘Jesus Christ,’ she breathes, and then knocks the toilet lid down, shoves him down onto it, ‘what do you need me to do?’

‘Are your hands steady?’ he asks, because his clearly aren’t, ‘I need this stitched.’

Laura looks at the hole in her husband’s arm, the blood dripping onto the tile, and she takes a breath. She had two kids – one of them by C-Section – she can handle this.

‘Do you need anything to – to help?’ she asks, even as she goes under the sink to get the first aid kit. ‘Alcohol?’

Clint gives her a look, and she holds her hand up. Then he waves the towel.

‘Bit onto this,’ he says, ‘muffles it. Not got any local.’

Laura gives him a mad little look, and the dope just smiles.

‘Honey,’ he says, ‘hurry up?’

She ends up sat on his lap, his arm in hers, and he bites onto the towel, clutches at her bow with his free hand. She’ll have bruises in the shape of his hand for weeks, but at least she’s got his arm stitched up. It’s not the neatest job in the world, because her hands were steadier than his, sure, but not by much. Even so, it’s clean, it’s closed, it’s wrapped up, and the tracker is flushed, miles away from where they are. If HYDRA is watching his tracker, he’s on the move, heading towards one city or another, away from here.

There’s nothing else to do except kiss him and not stop. He’s shaking, the tremors in his hands back in full force, and Laura knows he’s scared. He could have just brought HYDRA to their doorstep. If that happens, she knows he’ll keep them safe, because he has always kept them safe. Thinking about it isn’t going to help, and she shifts, straddles him instead, presses as close as she can, a familiar, warm weight in his lap and against his heart.

‘I’ve got you,’ she whispers against his ear, kisses along the steam-damp arch of his neck and shoulder. ‘I’ve got you, you’re alright. You’re safe.’

His nails, bitten down as always, worn away by manual labour, bite into her thighs, rake lines inches long, and she flinches, but doesn’t draw away.

‘I’ve got you,’ she repeats, straightens to rest her brow against his, noses pressed, watch his eyes watching hers. ‘It’s alright, Clint, you’re alright. I’ve got you.’

He licks his lips, swallows, smoothes his thumbs over the sore lines of his nails.

‘Sorry,’ he whispers, and she laughs, breathless, pulls him into her neck, lets him hide his face.

‘Don’t apologise,’ she tells him, ‘you did what you had to do.’

He knows she’s not talking about the fine white lines and flakes of skin decorating her thighs.

* * *

_2015_

As soon as Laura had mentioned Clint’s plans to extend the patio and needing to dig up the lawn, Bucky had put down his crayons and gone off to immediately start digging. He stomps off across the grass, spade in hand, and Laura smiles fondly; he’s been working hard to stop sneaking, but it’s an ongoing effort, finding the balance between his natural sneak and the over-exaggerated stomping Lila had demonstrated the first time he accidentally snuck up on Laura and made her scream.

(She’s been trying assure him that it’s fine, honestly, she wasn’t frightened, just startled, and she should have known better, she’s had Fury and Nat appearing out of the woodwork for half her life, and she should be okay with these things by now. He has a better kicked-puppy expression than anyone she’s ever met, and she drags him down to kiss the wrinkle in his nose, ruffling his hair and assuring him that she’s _fine_ , stop looking like that.)

So off he goes, stomping his feet, and Laura watches him through the kitchen window as he traces the line Clint had drawn with his feet, marking it with well-trained eyes. He digs close to the current patio, where the old barbeque stands, and she gets the feeling that Clint’s going to come home from New York one day with one twice the size to feed the army they’ve accumulated over the last few months. Clint had marked most of it out already. In a couple of weeks, Steve will be back from his mission wherever it was doing whatever it was, and he’ll be dragged in to help. Bucky will have the first half done and the slabs laid in preparation, but Clint will set them to the rest.

A few squares of dirt later, he comes across a tree root. And then he comes across another, and another after that. Laura watches him shove the spade into the grass with an idle, heavy throw, and he stands there with his hands on his hips for a minute as he considers.

The first few give way beneath his grip easily, tugged out of the earth by the mechanical strength of his metal arm. She figures he’ll face resistance soon, and begins preparing tea for when he gives up and comes back in. He’s tugging at one when she looks away, feet planted, and she thinks, foolishly, that he’s sensible enough to stop when he realises he can’t do it.

Then again, he’s starting to copy the way Clint stretches his back out, and rubs the back of his neck the same way, and Clint doesn’t know when to stop either.

(As she turns away to get the camomile tea, she misses him begin to tug harder at the root. When it refuses to budge, he makes a noise not unlike an angry cat. He tells it that he is the Winter Soldier. When it is unfazed, he adds that he will not be beaten by a twig.)

Laura is not sure what’s worse; the startled scream, or the sudden cackling laughter after maybe three seconds of utter silence. She hesitates, and turns. Bucky is flat on his back, legs still in the air like he’d been about to roll backwards over his head, and clutched triumphantly in both hands is the better half of a large tree root. She looks at the tree; it somehow manages to look mildly offended.

‘Are you alright?’ she calls, and rushes down the steps to cross the field to where he’s lying.

He laughs harder, waves the tree root at her.

‘I’m fine, Momma,’ he assures her, and his laughter dies down to quiet, pleased-with-himself giggles. ‘I’m fine.’

Lucky comes bounding out of nowhere to clamp the root in his jaws and tug.

‘Lucky, no,’ Laura says, and reaches to tap him on the nose, but Bucky tells her it’s fine.

‘He won’t get it off me,’ he says, and manages to get his legs back in order to push himself upright, effortlessly, without using either hand to brace himself. ‘Sit, boy.’

Lucky’s ass hits the ground and his tail wags, but he sits waiting patiently.

After a moment faking him out, Bucky hurls the root as far as his metal arm can manage, and the Labrador takes off at a sprint to get it.

‘See? He’s good,’ he says, dusts himself down, and glares at the stump of the root.

Laura looks at it. It looks very unfortunate.

‘I think I'm done pulling roots today,’ Bucky says eventually, and Laura smiles, pats his back, because it’s the closest bit of flesh.

‘You’ve done well,’ she says, ‘Clint’ll be proud.’

He nods.

Smiling, she tells him that _she’s_ prouder, and Lucky comes bounding back with the root, dragging it along behind him.

* * *

_2012_

It’s a little over two months before Loki, and Nick comes by to visit. He doesn’t really mean to visit, per se. He mostly just wants to needle Clint into doing recon, and he knows that Clint hates doing recon more than he hates anything else. For a man that is happy to spend eighteen hours straight perched in cramped conditions in a tiny pigeonhole with barely six inches to see the outside world through, he hates recon.

Which is a shame, because Clint is the best agent that Nick can spare to keep an eye on Selvig.

He has a speech prepared. He has at least three variations of the speech prepared. He even has a version prepared to use on Laura, so that Laura can help him convince Clint that he needs to do recon.

He’s not prepared to walk through the door and see a sopping-wet and half-naked Lila Barton run through the hall screaming at the top of her lungs. There’s a crash from the lounge, and then Clint is following her, soaked from collar to knee and looking harried.

‘Help me,’ he says by way of greeting, but then he’s gone, trying to cut her off by going another route, but Lila’s sharp and doubles back, cackling now. Somewhere in the last few seconds, she’s shed the last of her clothes.

It probably says something that Nick is not at all concerned.

‘She’s three, Agent Barton,’ Nick says as Clint passes him again, towel in hand.

‘Why do you think I can’t catch her?’ Clint throws over his shoulder. ‘What am I going to do?’

‘Catch her?’ Nick asks, and Clint gives him a withering look before skidding on a wet patch and going flat on his ass.

He curses loudly in Czech. Nick is absolutely sure that rude words and ‘can I pet your dog?’ are the only words Clint voluntarily learnt.

‘Mind your language,’ he says, and Clint rolls to his feet.

Lila squeals and then makes a noise no human child should be able to make, and Laura appears by the stairs, their toddler wrapped up tight in a towel, looking grumpy.

‘Hi, Nick,’ she says. She looks tired. Nick considers making Coulson take a week off to come babysit so the Bartons can get out and, God forbid, make another one. ‘Clint, your daughter needs a bath.’

‘Do not,’ Lila grumps.

‘Grandpa Nick thinks you need a bath,’ she says, and Clint approaches to take the toddler the way he’d approach a feral dog.

Nick is tempted to say he thinks nothing of the sort, but Lila has grubby toes from her barefoot running around and had no doubt been playing outside.

‘You need a bath, young lady,’ he says, and she pouts at him as Clint eases her out of her momma’s arms.

‘Do not,’ she repeats.

‘Don’t be rude,’ Clint tells her, and she huffs.

‘She gets that off you,’ Laura tells him.

‘I do not object to a bath,’ Clint sniffs, nods to Nick and disappears upstairs with Lila.

Once the bathroom door is shut, Nick says, ‘he always objects to a bath.’

‘I heard that!’ Clint yells.

Rolling her eyes, Laura steps the rest of the way to open her arms. Nick hesitates for half a second, the way he always hesitates for half a second, before accepting the hug. After almost twenty years – after personally vetting her – he knows she wouldn’t ever dream of harming him. She’s probably the safest person in the world to him at any given moment. But the hesitation remains.

Besides, nobody resists a hug from Laura Barton. He should send her on diplomatic missions; she’d save a lot of grief and injuries.

‘How have you been?’ she asks when she draws away, ushers him over the threshold and through towards the kitchen. There’s been a new renovation – a wall is missing.

She shuts the door and follows him to where the kettle is beginning to whistle.

‘Tea?’

‘Thank you. I’ve been well. As well as I can be, of course. Doesn’t get any easier, being Director. I’ve been thinking about taking an early retirement. Hill and Coulson are getting close to being ready to take over.’

‘You’re welcome to stay here,’ she says, ‘if you do take retirement. We can have the guest room made up in ten minutes. Clint would love to redecorate it.’

‘I know,’ he says, with a nod. ‘But it’ll be a few years yet.’

She pours the tea and as she hands him the mug, she asks, ‘not like you to stop by unannounced.’

‘I need to steal your husband,’ he says, because she’s not stupid enough to accept anything less. ‘I need him to do recon.’

She scoffs. ‘Good luck, he’s on his annual leave.’

Nick nods. ‘I know. I don’t want to do it, but I need someone I can trust.’

She eyes him as she sits with her mug. ‘You’re _sure_ it needs to be him?’ she asks.

He nods again, sniffs at the tea; peppermint, brewed just right.

‘I’m afraid so,’ he says, ‘it’s a sensitive matter, but there’s someone I’m beginning to not trust, and I want him to do his thing.’

Laura sighs. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

It takes her two months, but she manages to convince him to hear Fury out. Fury stops by the Hub on his way to Roswell to collect Barton, and briefs him as he takes another detour to Joint Dark. Barton is not impressed, but he introduces himself to the vaguer-eyed Selvig before scrambling up to the gangway and staying there until Fury returns from Roswell for a status report.

* * *

_2012_

Maria visits two weeks and three days after Clint comes home. He’s slipped four times in that time, and two days ago, it took Laura seven hours to get him back. Seven hours. She’s exhausted. Lila is fussing about something or other, and Cooper has a bump in his head from running into the door.

She’s got no idea where Clint is, but he’s got the dog with him, so he’ll find his way home eventually.

Maria arrives in a sleek black jeep, prim and proper as always, and Laura gives her a flat look when she lets herself in before managing to muster a smile.

‘Maria, hi,’ she says, and Maria stops mid-step in the middle of the hall.

‘You’re,’ she starts, and then stops. ‘Do I need to do anything?’

 _Leave_ , Laura wants to say, _send someone who gives a fuck_.

Instead she swallows, says, ‘can you make tea?’

She surprises herself that her voice is steady.

Nodding, Maria toes off her heels – and why would she wear heels at the farm? Laura doesn’t know what she’s planning, but suspicion curdles like sour milk in the deepest pit of her belly – and pads, black tights whispering across the hardwood, into the kitchen.

Laura looks at Lila, balanced on her hip. Lila looks back with Clint’s grumpy resting face. Her features are pinching as she grows, looking more like her mother now. Her hair is summer-bright, matching Clint’s, and it curls loose around her face, fallen from the brightly-coloured snap clips pinning it back. There are moments where she looks like Natasha, moments where Laura looks at her and sees the haunted, broken stare her husband and his surrogate have when they crawl through the door at all hours, broken-boned and broken-spirited. 

They’re fine in the morning. But they’re in pain. In all these years, Laura doesn’t think they’ve ever not been in pain.

But then Lila smiles slow, easy, and reaches up to pat her mother’s face, draw her down to press sloppy, spit-slick kisses to her cheeks, and Laura smiles.

‘I love you,’ she whispers, because she needs to say it. Lila needs to hear it. Clint’s barely said a word since he’s been home.

The silence rubs against her skin like shards of glass instead of stray threads.

Maria bustles in the kitchen. Cooper spots her through the door and rushes over, wobbly from the bump, and clings to her leg. Maria lifts him by the back of his jeans and balances him on her hip.

‘I’ve got some new books for you,’ she says, ‘but only if you’ve been good.’

The lack of Coulson aches. Lila’s room still isn’t quite right. There are still stains of paints on the walls, and the paper is peeling where the thrown plastic cup of juice got to it. For a three year old, she’s strong. Laura has no idea how she yanked her mattress off the bed and across the room. It’s not a big girl’s bed, not yet. But even she has to use both hands to flip it.

Clint can’t bring himself to redecorate. Coulson is a gaping hole in his chest, big enough that if Laura tried, she’s sure she could get her whole hand in and out the other side. It was the icing on the cake, and he acts like it doesn’t hurt.

She’s sick of it. Sick of him pretending like he feels nothing. She used to be able to read his face, read every thought on the crease of his dimples. Now he looks at her as though he’s blind, as though she is holding fire and electricity and she heard stories of his interrogation training. Nick himself had called, debriefed her over the phone. She’d been able to hear the gentle shush of waves from his end of the phone. She doubts now that there were waves, that he was stood on the beach explaining to her that her husband was being tortured, that he was being trained to withstand torture, to give away nothing.

Her hands shake, and she presses a kiss to Lila’s hair, gently lowers her to the floor. She stumbles a bit, and then jogs – never able to walk, that one, on her feet months earlier than average, and able to rush to the door to meet her father before she’d hit eighteen months – over to her activity books. She’s showing more aptitude for colouring inside the lines than she is sounding out words. Clint isn’t worried. Clint’s never worried. Laura does all the worrying for him.

(This is a lie. The doctors at S.H.I.E.L.D. are beginning to question his panic attacks and his constant, too-fast, too-erratic BPM. They want to run tests. All it does is send him further into a panic. Clint has never done anything but worry. He knows no other way.)

As Lila colours, she babbles the words to a lullaby. It’s Clint’s favourite. She doesn’t know most of the words yet, can’t string the syllables together, but she knows enough. When Maria had come two weeks and four days ago, dark eyes darker still, mouth a thin line and in combat gear, Lila had asked for that lullaby. Laura cannot play the guitar, cannot get her head around it no matter how many times Clint’s fingers guide hers, teaches her the chords. Part of her had wondered, as she repeated the lullaby for a third time, Lila just beginning to drowse, as her throat began to burn with the onset of tears – or bile, she was never able to tell the difference – whether there was a part of Clint left, in the empty shell her handsome, beautiful man had become, that could feel it. He always said he knew when she sang a lullaby to the kids, always teased that he should have been a psychic and not a performer. She’d hoped he could hear her in his heart, whatever of it was left.

She draws a breath. It shakes enough that Maria hears. Her eyes narrow. They eye each other. Cooper’s bumped, aching head rests against his Godmother’s shoulder, and Laura feels a prickle in her throat. A hard, burning swallow, and she has to lick her lips, mouth like ash.

Maria sets the tea she’d readied for her down, and gently guides Cooper back to the floor, nudges him towards his sister.

‘Look after her for me,’ she says, and Cooper nods, wobbles with the lost equilibrium of the gesture, before flopping to the rug next to his sister.

He reads, slow and stilting, to her. But he reads. Maria grabs Laura’s wrist in a vice-grip and drags her into the toilet. There isn’t room for them both, not really. It stinks of blood in here; Clint had obviously returned, sometime recently, scrubbed his hands raw again and disappeared, leaving a stained nailbrush and bloody sink. Maria runs the tap, rinses the nailbrush out, sets it on the shelf. The automatic air freshener sprays over their heads, mists them in Fresh Linen.

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ Maria asks.

‘What the fuck was I supposed to say?’ Laura spits back, and takes herself aback with the venom of it.

Quieter, she adds, ‘you don’t give the slightest damn. He’s a fucking number, a lanyard and a bow and arrow. A fucking lapdog. You don’t _care_.’

Maria doesn’t look offended. She doesn’t look anything. She just looks. She looks and doesn’t apologise.

‘I’m sorry,’ Laura says, because one of them has to apologise and it might as well be her. ‘I’m sorry, I’m – I’m just – it’s been a hard couple of weeks. It’ll be alright. We’ll be alright.’

We. We, we, we. There is no I in Laura Barton.

Maria’s lips thin and her brow creases just so, and Laura draws a hard breath through her nose. It sounds like a sniffle. She runs her shaking hands through her hair, knots them against her nape, stares at the floor.

Maria doesn’t touch her, doesn’t say a word of comfort. It’s not in Maria’s repertoire, and if she tried, Laura knows she’d throw a punch or two. She does not want to be touched, she does not want to be comforted. She wants someone to _fix this_.

They stand there in silence for a few long, aching moments. Laura doesn’t know what to do any more, and after some more time has passed in bruised-bone consideration, she admits that.

A shaky exhale and she says, ‘I’m losing him. I’m doing everything I can, and I’m losing him.’

She presses the back of a finger under her eyes, sweeps away the tears collected on her lashes. After a moment spent composing herself, she squares her shoulders.

‘S.H.I.E.L.D. did nothing to help him,’ she says, ‘they debriefed him, gave him a pamphlet, and sent him home. He says that Nick gave the order.’

Maria’s face remains impassive, thin mouth and creased brow, but something twitches. Laura’s not sure what it is, but something gives her away. She hadn’t known.

‘Fury would never sanction that,’ Maria says.

‘Apparently, Fury did. I know when my husband is lying, Maria. If he says Nick sent him home, then Nick sent him home.’

For a minute, Maria considers this.

‘You should have said something,’ she says again, doesn’t frame it as a question. There is only a little judgement, the kind of judgement that comes from an outsider’s perspective, from someone who doesn’t _understand_. ‘You should have called Fury, or me, or even Agent Romanoff. One of us could have done something.’

Like a switch, like a trigger for a sleeper agent the likes of which Maria hasn’t seen for half a decade, Laura explodes.

‘You think I didn’t?’ she demands, puffs up to her full height. She’s just over five inches shorter than Maria, but the anger brings her up that half-foot with no issues. ‘You think that wasn’t the _first_ thing I did? I had no fucking warning that my husband was being dropped off – was being _dumped_ – because he was being fucking dumped, Maria, don’t you _dare_ tell me otherwise! He was being dumped back here with a pamphlet about Post-Trauma like he hasn’t had it his working life! I had no fucking warning that I would turn around to ask him if he wanted a cup of coffee and he would be fucking _gone_. Just gone. Like he’d never been there at all, like his skin is a suit he can take on and off when he needs to. Do you know how _terrifying_ that was? To see him like that? I have never been scared of him in my _life_ , and where the _fuck_ were you?’

She pauses to draw breath. Her words are bounced back at a murmur against the tiles, a whispered declaration of sheer rage. Laura does not break. She bends, but she does not break. The cracks are fine hair on glass, near invisible and retaining much of their strength. It would only take one well-aimed tap to shatter her. Maria does not do her the indignity of taking that final blow.

Laura wishes she would. The bubbling in her gut, soured and painful, a festering mass of guilt and hate and sadness isn’t nearly a strong enough word to describe the agony she feels when she looks at Clint and feels the ice of his skin beneath her fingertips, the sudden terror that strikes her when his eyes go blue and she thinks _he could kill me_. She wishes, desperately, perhaps, that Maria would push her the last little way. It might be cathartic, to just let it all go, to let it burn away until only the ashes of her dignity remain.

Instead, Maria just looks at her like she looks at everything; creased brow, thin mouth, dark eyes staring straight ahead.

Phil was always better at this. He’d have known what to say, what to do. He’d have known how to brush loose hair from Laura’s face and draw her into a hug she desperately needs, would have known how to whisper platitudes that are meaningless but so necessary. She might as well have punched herself in the gut. It would have hurt less.

‘I didn’t know,’ Maria admits then, in a rushed breath, as though ripping it off of her tongue like a particularly sticky plaster. ‘If I’d known, I’d have – he was supposed to go to debrief. We – it was bedlam. You saw the news, there was so much going on, and I guess his paperwork slipped through the cracks. I never even saw the paperwork, or I’d have queried it, but that’s not what you want to hear.’

Laura’s jaw juts, and she takes a breath.

‘No,’ she says, ‘it isn’t. But it’ll do.’

Laura Barton bends, but she doesn’t break.

‘When I get back to the Triskellion, I’ll find Fury,’ Maria promises, ‘we’ll get it cleared up. Get Clint in therapy, get him debriefed properly – no pamphlets.’

There’s a soft chuckle bubbling in Laura’s throat, but she swallows it down. It makes her feel sick, like too many bubbles in her cola. She takes another breath to steady herself.

‘Still,’ Maria continues, arms folding and hip cocking. She looks almost young in that moment, like they could be college students complaining about an assignment. Laura barely remembers college. This has been her life for so long. ‘It’s not like Fury to mess up like that, to give orders like that. I would have thought he’d only send him home when he was sure that Barton was safe. We’ve never seen anything like this before, like Loki. I know he wouldn’t have wanted to put the kids in danger, put you in danger. Barton is – one of our best.’

‘He’s a killer,’ Laura says, because the words hang like rotten fruit between them. ‘He’s killed everyone you’ve told him to kill, and he doesn’t blink, because you trained him too well. He does it because it’s his job. Tell him who to shoot, and he’ll shoot. Never misses, either, does he? Best record in S.H.I.E.L.D., probably. Nat might match him, I guess.’

She shakes her head.

‘It’s not your fault. I don’t blame you. I just – answer your phones more often. I can’t do this alone.’

‘You won’t,’ Maria says, and the hand she places on Laura’s shoulder feels like molten lead.

A rapid waist-high knock at the door startles them both.

‘Momma?’ comes Cooper’s voice, hesitant. He’s never heard his momma shout like that before, and Laura feels the guilt rip through her belly. ‘Lila needs to pee.’

Laura rakes a hand over her face; there are pinpricks of black from her mascara splayed across the eye socket, her eyes red-raw and still wet, her skin mottled red from the pushed-back tears. She takes a breath, tugs the door open and eases through it.

‘Of course, baby,’ she says, ‘I’m sorry, we didn’t mean to be so long.’

We. There is no I in Laura Barton.

Maria follows, taking Cooper back onto her hip and back through to the kitchen while Laura goes to handle Lila.

A short while later, as they’re drinking their tea – a freshly brewed pot, because the first one had gone cold – Laura abruptly puts down her mug.

‘Can you watch the babies?’ she asks, ‘I need to go and scream very loudly for five minutes.’

‘Sure thing,’ Maria says, ‘put some boots on.’

Laura looks at her, and then toes off her slippers to pull on Clint’s Timberlands, which are far too big for her and she has to pick her feet up to walk. She clomps down the porch steps, and goes far enough into the woods that she can’t see the house before she kicks a tree and screams until she’s hoarse.


	11. Fission Mailed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things work out.

_2015_

Lila had been drawing, but when Steve and Bucky arrive, she elects to forget completely about it in favour of her favourite brother and her newest (coolest) uncle, taking a hop, skip and a jump to get up into Bucky’s arms. Steve is still surprised that Bucky is _fine_ with it, but Lila hooks her ankles and presses kisses to his unshaven cheeks and makes herself at home.

So Bucky carries Lila around with him for a while, making the rounds of greeting everyone and supporting Lila with his metal hand as he doubles over to pet the dog, who comes bounding over to greet him. Laura is in the kitchen as it seems she always is, and Wanda and Pietro are with her, running through more Sokovian recipes. They might be kosher. Steve can’t tell from the list of ingredients they rattle off. Nathaniel is in his high chair with a multi-textured activity book, babbling away to himself with a reply from his mother for every almost-word.

His fingers itch, and he looks at the pile of pencils and paper abandoned on the table.

‘Steven Rogers,’ Laura calls, as he tries to slink to the table. ‘Where is my hello?’

He shrugs his shoulders in embarrassment, and goes to kiss both her cheeks. She’s soft and warm and smells of her favourite perfume, and he breathes her in the way he always does when she wraps one arm around his waist and squeezes affectionately. (Nat teases him, whenever she gets the chance, about how he’s stealing her as a mother, and he can’t deny it to himself any more, not that he ever really did.)

‘Have you been keeping well?’ she asks, studies his face. ‘You’re looking well, but I can never tell with you boys.’

Steve knows that this is a complete lie; Laura can tell when Clint’s going to have a panic attack a solid minute before he does, and she’s not quite there with Bucky, but she’s able to tell his mood from a glance at his hair. She just needs time to learn their quirks. Mothers are superheroes, this is something Steve has always known, but by God, Laura Barton is the kind of supermom that deserves a comic book of her own.

‘I’m well,’ he assures her, and glances to Bucky, who still has Lila in his arm. Her head’s on his shoulder, and her fingers curled loose in the neck of his Henley. ‘It’s been a good few weeks.’

She watches him for a second more, and then nods. ‘You say hi to Clint?’

‘We called up to him when we arrived. He’s on the shed roof again.’

‘Piet?’ she asks.

‘On it,’ he replies, and disappears in a whoosh of air.

Steve can hear him yelling outside, and Clint yells back. There’s laughter, screaming, more laughter. There’s a plaintive yell of ‘ _momma!_ ’ that Laura studiously ignores.

‘They’re getting on well,’ he says.

‘Like father, like son,’ she snorts, and Wanda tugs her sleeve. As she turns back to the Maximoff girl, she says, ‘off you go, then, make yourself at home.’

Steve nods, and then nods to Wanda when he feels her thoughts brush against his own. He assures her that he’s fine, and she retreats. It’s not as awkward as it was, feeling someone else’s thoughts. He can’t read her, of course he can’t, but he can feel the curiosity, the fierce, animalistic loyalty she’s got burning in her belly. He understands that; he’d fight tooth and claw to defend this place, too. From whatever attack came. He gets that, so he doesn’t mind her scoping him out to make sure he’s not going to start a fight with Bucky again. After the three awful months of grovelling it took to get back into the house, he’s not about to start again.

He takes a seat at the table, draws a piece of paper and a pencil towards him, and settles his shoulder. Bucky takes shape quickly, the muscle memory of his hand so familiar and strong even after seventy years, but Lila is new, a complicated mass of plaits and folded skirt, and it takes him a few hesitant swipes of the pencil to get the curve of her leg right. Shading is easier, and he picks out the gold of her hair with one of the crayons. He considers dotting in the freckles on her arms.

‘Who’s the freckly one?’ he asks, and puts a couple in on her bare shoulder, where they’re most prominent, tiny pinpricks of the pencil point.

‘Hmm? Clint. He goes blond and gets freckles all down his arms in the summer. He’s not too bad this year. Back in the nineties he was so bad for it. Jetting off everywhere, and we were in Manhattan.’

 ‘I thought he was based in Brooklyn,’ Steve says, and hashes the olive green of Bucky’s Henley with another crayon.

‘He was,’ Laura says, ‘but I was based in Manhattan. I was closer to S.H.I.E.L.D., and his apartment was in a real rough building. He didn’t like me being there, in case I’d bump into his landlords, you know?’

‘Bad?’ Steve asks, and goes back to sketching in the shape of Lila’s dress.

‘Terrible. They were – he called them the Tracksuit Mafia. Never seen anything like it. Russian mobsters with these awful seventies moustaches and it was – ugh, Steve, it was just terrible.’

From the yard, Clint yells, ‘did I just hear Tracksuit Mafia?’

‘Turn your hearing aids down,’ Laura says, almost under her breath.

‘Never!’ Clint laughs, and eventually comes clomping up the steps to stick his head through the door. ‘I turned them down; what was that about the Tracksuit Mafia?’

‘Steve asked about your freckles, so I told him about where we lived back in New York.’

‘Oh, right,’ Clint says, and toes off his boots, leaving them on the step to pad to the sink and wash his hands. ‘They were pretty bad. I stole the dog off them, you know? Not literally, but after I got him out of the vet’s, I kept him.’

Steve frowns then, head tilting. ‘Wait, when was this?’

In the lounge area, Lila and Bucky have sunk to the floor to play with said dog. Steve watches them for a second, and then glances back at Clint, who’s dragging a chair over to Nathaniel’s high chair to play with him for a while.

‘Uh – ninety – ninety-two?’ Clint asks, glancing at Laura.

Laura nods. ‘Spring, I think you said. I could probably find the report of the traffic jam you guys caused if I looked.’

Steve looks baffled. ‘How is he still alive? He’s over twenty years old now.’

Clint shrugs. ‘You’ll have to ask Fury. He’s responsible for whatever it is he did. Either way, my dog’s still alive at twenty-whatever, I ain’t going to question it.’

Steve nods, supposes that that’s true enough. He goes back to his drawing, finishes off the last of the sketch of Lila’s dress, and moves onto one of Clint and Nathaniel, Nath happily gnawing on his dad’s finger.

* * *

_2015_

‘Clint? Clint!’

He opens his eyes, groans, and rolls over onto his back.

‘Fucking hell,’ he spits, and Natasha starts laughing.

‘Stay where you are, I’m on my way.’

He doesn’t tell her that he doesn’t have a choice. His palms are searing as he tries to shove himself marginally more upright than he was, and his right leg, for the moment, is useless, so left leg shoving to try and push himself out of the way and preferably behind non-existent cover it is. Christ, has snow always been this cold?

‘Jotunheim is colder,’ Thor says, and Clint realises he spoke out loud. ‘This is pleasant.’

Clint flops back against the snow, stares at the sky, and makes pathetic baby noises.

Natasha comes crashing through the trees a minute later, takes out the HYDRA soldiers creeping closer – an Avenger flat on his back is still an Avenger, and they aren’t _quite_ stupid enough to charge in – and skids onto her ass next to him.

‘Clint’s injured,’ she says, touching her ear with one hand.

‘I’m fine,’ he tells her, and she looks at him like she wants to slap him with the bloody hand she’s got pressed to his side.

‘Shut up,’ she says, and as she fishes through his pockets for a styptic, she adds, ‘can someone deal with that bunker, please?’

Clint hears a roar and sees a flash of green over Nat’s shoulder. A moment passes, and then the bunker goes down. Nat smiles, peeps out a quick, ‘thank you,’ and turns her attention back to her bleeding teammate.

‘You have two dollars and fifty four cents,’ she says, ‘in loose change. But you don’t have a styptic?’

He’s fairly certain the agony scalding his hip bone needs more than a bit of powder.

‘Bad?’ he asks, when she doesn’t do anything more.

‘We need evac,’ she says, ‘now. I can’t get him back to the jet alone.’

A rustle from behind the trees, and more HYDRA soldiers come barrelling through the underbrush, guns raised. Nat is distracted with Clint, but not stupid, and Clint knows she knows they’re about to be surrounded.

Clint’s fairly certain his comms are down, because he doesn’t hear anything from the rest of the team. Somewhere above the trees, in the base itself, there’s an explosion. Tony must be causing some trouble.

‘Just follow the blood trail,’ Nat says, and then she’s grabbing Clint’s arms and dragging him through the snow as fast as she can. It’s pretty fast, considering. That could be because they’re going down a slight incline.

‘This isn’t helping,’ he tells her, or he thinks he tells her. The sudden pull on his waist makes his vision waver and the dappled winter sunlight turns black, waterlogged grey. It takes him a moment, as Nat shoves him upright behind a tree, to realise that it’s waterlogged because he’s got tears coming.

‘Don’t die,’ she tells him, and pins herself behind another tree. ‘Thor’s on his way.’

‘I’ll try not to,’ he groans, and presses his hand to his side.

Nat takes potshots at the soldiers while they wait. He can hear Hulk roaring and smashing and stomping about, feel the vibrations through the snow, and knowing he’s sticking close is kind of sweet. He cares. That’s nice.

‘He’s a good guy,’ Nat says.

‘Who?’

She looks at him. Her eyes are very green, even from this distance.

‘You were talking out loud,’ she tells him, ‘you do that a lot, did you know?’

‘Mm. Hurts. ‘Course I am. Thought Thor was on his way.’

He’s slurring, and he knows he’s slurring.

Nat takes another shot, curses, and then says, ‘Thor, where are you? He’s coming. He’s got HYDRA to deal with, too. Don’t get your panties in a twist.’

Clint nods. The thunder god crashes through the crowd of soldiers a few minutes later, and comes to a rest on Clint’s other side. Nat looks at the soldiers groaning on the floor, and shuffles over to look at Clint, whose chin is on his chest and isn’t reacting to Thor appearing at his side. She shakes his shoulder.

‘Clint? Clint, you here? Don’t you pass out on me, bird brain. Come on, come back to us. You’re breathing so you aren’t dead.’

She taps his cheek with the back of her hand, cold fingers snapping sharp, and he jerks, cracks his head against the tree, hisses and tries to draw away from the pain in his ribs. His head turns to Nat, and she smiles at the wrinkled nose, rubs her thumb down it to smooth it out before giving the back of his head a rub. He screws his eyes shut, and tries to move.

‘That is a nasty wound,’ Thor says.

Clint looks at the snow. It’s very red. Too red, really.

‘Oh,’ he says, barely more than a sigh of breath. ‘Did I pass out?’

Thor looks at Nat over his head, and Clint watches Nat look back. They exchange a look that wobbles in and out of his field of view, and then Clint’s being lifted.

‘Ow,’ he says, because he’s being manhandled, and he’s not a fan of being manhandled.

But then he’s over Thor’s shoulder, and they’re airborne, and he thinks he passes out again, because he’s back in the jet, strapped in with his jacket on the floor and his undershirt up by his armpits, styptic on his injury and a woozy feeling in his head.

‘Did I pass out again?’ he asks.

Nat’s fiery head appears a hazy mess of tangled curls above him. Her hand, warm now, brushes over his face, through his hair. He winces at the sting; when did he hit his head?

‘You’re alright,’ she tells him, ‘we’re on our way back to the Tower.’

He tries to move, but Steve presses on his thigh, holds him down.

‘Stay where you are,’ he says, ‘Thor said you tried to give yourself an IV. J.A.R.V.I.S. taught him how to do it.’

Clint looks at the bruise forming in his elbow, yellow and black and green.

‘How badly did I miss?’ he asks, and drops his head back onto the bed.

‘Badly enough,’ Nat teases, and she tweaks his ear.

When she’s sure that he’s looking at her and seeing, she signs, YOU’RE IN TROUBLE.

‘Nah,’ he groans, and shuts his eyes. ‘Nah.’

‘Sleep,’ Nat whispers, rubs her thumb over his eyebrow. ‘We’ll be back home soon.’

Clint knows that home is not actually home. But he isn’t going to get to go home after this. They’ve got the sceptre, but there are enhanced humans out there, experiments of Strucker’s. There’s no way this is over. But he sleeps, because sleep is easier, and he wakes when Thor helps him to his feet to carry him where Doctor Cho points.

* * *

_1996_

‘I lost my virginity when I was fifteen – no, no, it was before Christmas, I’d have been fourteen. About a month before I was fifteen.’

Laura starts, and stops still for a moment, strawberry half in her mouth.

‘You what?’ she asks, when she’s decided it’s easier to take the strawberry out than chew and swallow it.

‘Yeah, just before Christmas. Been there just over a year? One of the aerial girls, she took a shine to me, I guess. Her boyfriend gave me a shiner, but hey, she started it?’

Laura throws the strawberry at him, and Clint catches it without looking. He’s lying on the floor staring at the ceiling; he’d been pretending to exercise, but now he’s just sprawled out, and apparently reminiscing.

‘Give me my strawberry back,’ she says, even though there’s a whole tub in arm’s reach.

‘You’d never catch it,’ Clint says, and shoves it in his mouth, Laura’s bite marks and all.

Laura stares at him for a few long moments, and then turns back to the strawberries, pulling another out to eat while beheading and dicing another.

‘So, um,’ she says, when the silence has dragged, ‘fourteen, huh?’

‘Wasn’t like I meant to,’ Clint says, and she sees him flip to his feet from the corner of her eye. ‘It was a, we’d just finished a tour, you know? Done the Christmas shows – yeah, yeah, we’d done the Christmas circuit, and we were packing up to migrate south for a couple of months. Texas, New Mexico, that area, you know? Last night before we had to get on the train, and I – I got so fuckin’ drunk. I was tiny back then, for my age. Real scrawny, so it didn’t take much. God, Barney was so mad. He hit the roof when he found out.’

He’s leaning on the counter now, arms folded and hips cocked back, spine cat-curved down as he rests his chin on his arms, watching her dice strawberries.

‘I’m not surprised,’ Laura says, ‘your brother sounds like he got the most sense out of the two of you. Christ, Clint, fourteen! And drunk too!’

She glances at him, at his downcast eyes, the slump to his posture.

‘I’m surprised,’ she says then, in a clawing attempt at levity, ‘you have a couple beers now and you pass out halfway out of your pants. You must have been a real heavyweight back then, to get it up and in.’

Clint snorts, and taps her with a heel. ‘I do not pass out after a couple of beers. A couple of _shots_ , maybe. But I’m surprised too. I threw up immediately after, and passed out outside her tent, that’s why her boyfriend found out. Dunno whether Barney was madder that I’d done it, or that I’d been caught in such a stupid way. We never talked about it.’

He looks morose still, and Laura watches him as she pulls out the last three strawberries, swiftly beheading them and rolling one across the counter to Clint, who pops it in his mouth without complaint. She considers teasing him about the bulging cheeks for a second, but then he starts chewing, and it’s that lingering, hesitating chew. He’s thinking hard, and she doesn’t know what to do to make him not think so hard.

‘Clint,’ she starts, and then stops.

He turns to rest his back against the counter, staring off at the far wall even though his head’s still angled towards her. They stay silent for a few minutes more. Laura throws the strawberries into the blender with the blueberries and the raspberries and the almond milk. The clock on the wall ticks over the twelve, and all of a sudden, it’s four a.m. and they’re stood in the kitchen in their underwear making fruit smoothies because Clint can’t sleep but it’s raining too hard to go for a walk.

‘Does it make a difference?’ he asks, quiet. He’s not looking at her. ‘Knowing that?’

‘Of course not,’ she says immediately. Then she says, ‘a little bit, yeah.’

‘Oh.’

‘Not in any bad way!’ she assures him. ‘Not like, “oh god he had sex in the circus at fourteen that’s gross I’ll have to break up with him!” Jesus Christ, no, no, not like that. Just. God, Clint, it’s been one thing after another all this time, and you just – you carried on, you know? I’m going to regret this, but she wasn’t fourteen too, was she?’

It’s barely a question. Laura isn’t stupid.

‘Twenty-three.’

‘I understand.’

And she does. She gets it.

‘Was she pretty?’

‘At the time, she was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. ‘Course, I hadn’t really seen any girls to think they were pretty. Just a couple of girls at school, but I barely went to begin with, you know? Only knew a few girls by name. They were pretty enough. Farm girls, mostly. Iowa country gals, all sunny pigtails and freckles and gingham dresses. It was the seventies, so.’

He shrugs a little, and abruptly sits down on the floor. Laura looks at the smoothie mix still sitting in the blender, and then she sits down next to him. They stare at the fridge magnets, freebies from promotional offers by charities and multipacks Clint thieved from work.

 ‘It doesn’t make you any different,’ Laura tells him. ‘I still – I still love you, you know.’

She doesn’t say it much. Clint is terrified to hear it; true to form, he flinches, and looks at his hands. They shake, so Laura takes them and holds them tight.

‘And you still would have had sex with her at fourteen whether I knew or not, you know? It still happened, even if I never knew.’

Clint nods. ‘I know.’

‘I just.’ She considers how to phrase it, and knows that carefully formulated placating sentences aren’t going to do the job. ‘It’s like – every time you tell me something about your past, about the time before your job, before me, before the dog and your Brooklyn apartment and all that? God, Clint, I’m so sorry.’

‘You don’t have to apologise. I did dumb shit, and I paid the price for doing dumb shit. Got a pretty good deal, you know? Got you out of it. Still think it’s gonna come bite me, whatever I made a deal with to get you. It’s gonna come and tear the floor out from under me, and I'm gonna be back where I was. Maybe it’s a dream, you know? Like maybe I’m gonna wake up and I’ve been sleeping off a beating and I'm still just nine waiting for ‘em to come home, only they’re never gonna. Maybe I’m dead in a gutter somewhere. It’s like I'm waiting to wake up sometimes, looking at you.’

 He bites hard on his lower lip, exhales hard through his nose. His gaze darts, like he can’t bear to look at anything, like he’s terrified he might see it looking back. Laura sees the cracks coming before they shatter him, and swings herself around to climb into his lap, tucking herself in around him, pulling him in. A protective barrier between him and the world, between him and whatever demons he’s got, because she’s sure that there are more than just Harold and the car crash and the circus. She’s sure there’s more than that.

‘You’re alright,’ she tells him, runs a hand through his hair. It’s getting long again. She’ll cut it in the morning, the proper morning, when the sun’s up and the rain’s gone and the radio blares the current number one loud enough to fill every nook and cranny of the apartment. ‘I’ve got you, honey, I’ve got you.’

He sniffs, wet, and his exhale is shaky.

‘I’m okay,’ he tells her, ‘I'm not gonna die.’

‘I never said you would,’ she whispers, and tucks her nose in behind his ear, breathes in the remnants of the sleep-soft smell of his skin. ‘You’re too stubborn for that, honey, far too stubborn.’

His hands curl against her back, but there’s no fabric to clutch at. So he just spreads his hands out again, cover as much of her back as he can.

* * *

_2015_

Sam is woken by a baby crying not an hour after getting to sleep; which had, he will admit, been surprisingly easy, given that it was a camp bed in a strange house with people he didn’t know. Sure, he could trust them, because they were Clint’s family, but it didn’t change the fact that Sam didn’t know them.

He blinks, blearily, and hears a bed creak above him, footfall, a door creaking. The crying stops after a few minutes, and Sam drifts again, woken a second time a few minutes later by pawing at the door. Hauling upright in T-shirt and boxers, he opens the door to let in the dog. Of course Clint has a Labrador, though, Sam thinks, and drops down to pet him, letting the dog sniff at his hands before judging him to be a) alright and b) entirely lacking in treats.

A lick to the fingers, and he goes to flop in a huffing heap beside the camp bed.

‘Alright,’ Sam whispers, and climbs over him to get back into bed. ‘You stayin’ with me, boy?’

The dog shifts to rest his head closer to Sam’s. Sam fidgets with his collar, seeks out the tag. Lucky, it reads. In the dim moonlight filtering in, Sam can just about make out a scar over the dog’s eye. Lucky, indeed.

‘Good dog,’ Sam breathes, and pets him until he falls asleep.

Laura wakes him the third time, after the sun has risen. She slips in without disturbing him, and he stirs at the jangle of Lucky’s collar and her bracelet as she scratches his neck, but doesn’t wake until she touches his shoulder. He’s rolled over in the night, back to the doors, and was flat out until she disturbed him.

‘Sam?’ she whispers, ‘sweetheart, it’s morning.’

He groans, tries to tug the blankets over his head. She laughs, and gets cool fingers under to tickle behind his ear. Yelping, he rolls off the camp bed and lands on the floor with a dull thump. Thank God it was less than a foot drop.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, and stands to help him up. Sam is sure he must weigh a good eighty pounds more than her, but she takes his weight with no problems. ‘I wouldn’t have disturbed you, but Clint’s getting Lila up, and she’s – she’s a bit of a fan.’

Sam stares at her. He’s got drool on his cheek, and he’s standing there in T-shirt and boxers and somehow it’s not awkward.

‘Go clean up,’ she laughs, and lets go of his hands. ‘Breakfast will be on the table in twenty minutes.’

Sam takes his clothes and washbag with him, and heads to the toilet that Clint had mentioned. It’s spacious, enough room for him to strip-wash and dress comfortably, and when he’s done ten minutes later, having made sure he was as presentable as he could manage, he drops his things back into his pack and heads to the kitchen. Clint is there now, half-dressed, and Sam hadn’t realised how scarred he was; his arms, for all they’re bared, are pretty much flawless. The rest of him is marbled with fine white lines and the knotted skin of bullet wounds. He’s wearing a wedding ring now, too.

It’s nice. He always seemed so uncomfortable around the other Avengers, but here, he’s so at peace; hell, his bird’s nest of hair and bare back are all he needs to see that.

‘Morning,’ he says, and now that there’s daylight, he can get a good look at Laura too.

Her hair’s pulled up into a high bun, a rough, keep-it-out-of-the-way kind of bun, and he’s pretty sure that’s one of Clint’s T-shirts, tucked into comfortable, well-worn jeans, and she looks just as comfortable as her husband. She’s so terribly pretty, with dimples and dark circles under her eyes, a softness to her form that Sam knows has to do with the months-old baby in the high chair that they both glance every other moment.

‘Mornin’,’ Clint hums, and glances over his shoulder to nod. ‘That’s Nathaniel,’ he adds, gestures at the baby.

Nathaniel babbles at the sound of his name, and Clint puts down what he was doing – it looks like pancake batter – to dry his hands and go to his son.

Laura, meanwhile, takes up her husband’s task, and turns to face Sam.

‘Did you sleep alright?’ she asks.

He nods, and takes a seat at the table. ‘I did, thank you. I didn’t mean to put you out at all.’

Laura snorts, and Clint presses a last few kisses to Nathaniel’s dark shock of hair before setting him back in the chair.

‘You didn’t put us out,’ Clint says, ‘we’ve had – we’ve had all of them, now, haven’t we?’

‘I don’t think Tony’s stayed the night,’ Laura hums, ‘but everyone else has.’

Clint thinks this over and then nods. ‘Yeah, that sounds about right. I mean, Wanda lives here, Nat pretty much does. Eh, whatever, either way. Welcome to Casa Barton, I guess.’

 It’s a nice house, now that Sam can see it. They favour green, it seems, but it works, looks good. They make idle talk while they wait for the kids to surface.

‘How many have you got?’ Sam asks, when Clint goes to call them down.

‘Biological? Three,’ Laura laughs. ‘Strays? Three that are officially ours, but honestly, if Clint brought them home, I’d never keep track.’

 Three biological children, Sam thinks, and somehow Clint managed to play the role of eligible bachelor so well that nobody suspected, Sam least of all. He had a wife and children and a farm in Nowhere, Iowa, and how could he stand being away from home? He’ll ask him one day, if Clint comes by HQ again. He’d said Wanda lived here, so maybe he will.

‘You’re welcome to stay as long as you like,’ Laura is saying, ‘I know the camp bed isn’t exactly meant for it, but Clint said you wanted to practice with your wings, and there’s no point only giving you a couple of days.’

In the hall, Clint is yelling up the stairs. ‘If you want breakfast, you’ve got one minute exactly!’

There’s muffled yelling back.

Sam turns in his chair, looks towards the hall.

‘Yes! Even you! Get your butts down here!’

 Laura rolls her eyes hard enough to stagger herself as she turns, and she puts the ready batter on the side, reaching up above the sink to get the pan down.

‘Are you alright with pancakes?’ she asks, as if it had suddenly just occurred to her.

‘I’m American,’ Sam assures her with a grin. She smiles back, pleased, and gets started on them.

‘She always makes too much,’ Clint says, and Sam flinches. ‘Ha-ha, sorry. She likes having people over, because there’s only so much I can eat, you know? Thank God Steve visits fairly regularly, I suppose, and we’re always sending Wanda back to HQ with a week’s worth of leftovers. At least we’re never short on food.’

Laura looks unapologetic. ‘I can never be sure when Nat or Nick will drop by. Maria and Phil used to stop by a lot, but I suppose Maria’s got more on her plate these days.’

‘Nick’s,’ Sam starts.

‘Nick came here,’ Clint tells him, ‘after S.H.I.E.L.D. went down. Spent a couple of weeks here, drinking all of my beer, and then disappeared again. He’s the reason I’ve got this place at all. When I married that gorgeous lady over there who, I have noticed, is wearing my T-shirt again – ‘ Here, Laura flexes her soft, girlish biceps, and it would show off the T-shirt far better if she was facing them ‘ – he tried to make us move in, but we didn’t come till we were expecting our second child.’

‘You mean I didn’t come until I was expecting our second,’ Laura snorts, and shakes a completed pancake onto the hot plate before starting on the next, ‘you, as I recall, were off hiding in a ditch in the south of France.’

‘It was Germany,’ he corrects, ‘and it wasn’t a ditch, actually. It was an empty moat.’ He looks at Sam, and Sam’s baffled expression, and adds, ‘I got all the weird and wonderful missions for S.H.I.E.L.D. and one of them involved this – this – what’s it called? I don’t know. People dress up like medieval heroes and smack each other with fake swords, it’s very sad. But there was some trouble with this one group, and I got sent out to investigate, and there is nothing like sitting in an empty moat in Germany when there’s a thunderstorm, taking potshots with a bow and arrow while some loser in a Robin Hood outfit takes potshots back.’

He shrugs, tickles Nathaniel’s chin, and rounds the table to get glasses down from the cabinet.

‘Still, I didn’t run out of arrows. But he was _terrible_ at fletching them. Absolutely _awful_. I broke his fingers for it.’

 It’s the most Sam’s ever heard Clint talk about his missions; normally, he clams up and refuses to acknowledge them. At first, Sam had thought it was some secrecy act or another, some paperwork Clint had signed that he was simply in the habit of keeping up, but he supposes he’s wrong.

Laura is chuckling, and bumps her husband’s hip with hers when it comes into range. Clint’s idle pinch to her backside is the worst attempt at subtlety Sam has seen in years.

‘You keep those fingers to yourself, Hawkeye,’ Laura hums, and Sam grins at Clint’s shrug.

‘Coffee?’ he asks Sam, and he nods.

‘Please.’

Two children come crashing into the lounge a few seconds later, and Sam turns as Clint leans back around the pillar to look at them. Neither of them are dressed yet, the girl in a pretty nightdress and the boy in mismatched pyjamas.

Clint eyes him. ‘You get grass-stains on your pants?’ he asks.

The boy flushes, nods. Clint hums and says nothing more on the matter.

‘Sam, this is Cooper and Lila, my two eldest. Kids, this is Sam.’

Sam is about to open his mouth, when Lila, pretty little Lila Barton with her momma’s eyes and her dad’s mousy hair (and, unfortunately, his nose), opens her mouth and lets out a sound Sam doesn’t think he’s heard since he went to watch _Jurassic Park_ years ago.

‘Falcon!’ she screeches, and Clint rolls his eyes to the ceiling, carries on with the coffee pot.

‘Told you she was a fan,’ Laura hums, deposits another pancake onto the hot plate. ‘Lila, if you take one more step towards him, I will give him your pancakes.’

Lila stops dead. Sam has never had any reason to not believe that mothers have eyes in the back of their heads, but he’s beginning to suspect that Laura might have some kind of superpower.

Clint scoops his daughter up with one arm as he takes a mug of coffee to Sam, pressing a kiss to her hair.

‘Mornin’, sweetheart,’ he hums, and Lila twists to hug him tight before sliding to the floor, scurrying to her spot at the table. Cooper doesn’t get picked up, but he does get a hug, and he follows his sister to the table.

Laura kisses their heads when she hands the pancakes out, and they both tilt their heads back to kiss her in return. Good kids, Sam thinks, and thanks Laura for his plate. Clint glances back towards the stairs, and then shrugs, takes a seat. Talk is easy, informal, and Sam joins in where he can, engaging the kids, even though he’s keeping an eye on Clint at all times, watching the way he reacts.

Laura kicks him under the table, and he glances at her. She smiles, grateful, and turns her attention back to Cooper, who is talking about the stars he saw last night. That would explain the grass stains Clint had mentioned, Sam supposes.

Halfway through breakfast, there is an almighty clatter from the hall.

‘Jesus,’ Sam yelps, despite himself.

Clint sighs. ‘You alright?’ he calls.

An unfamiliar voice calls, ‘I think so! Need a mop!’

‘Please say that it was just water this time,’ Clint grumbles under his breath, shoves the last forkful of pancakes in his mouth, and gets to his feet, gesturing Laura back into her chair. ‘I got him. You eat your breakfast.’

He disappears through a door behind her, reappears with a mop and heads for the hall.

‘He’s very clumsy,’ Lila says, ‘he has trouble with his, uh – momma?’

‘Motions,’ Laura offers, ‘he’s better, though.’

Sam feels like he’s been left out of an important loop.

He says that. He says, ‘I feel like I’ve been left out of a loop here.’

Laura smiles. ‘How much do you know about Sokovia?’ she asks.

Sam relays what he picked up from the news, what Steve and Nat supplemented.

‘Steve said there were, uh, twins, that helped fight Ultron. Nat said the brother died protecting Clint.’

Laura smiles. ‘Honey?’ she calls.

‘I’ve got him,’ Clint calls back, and then, quieter; ‘come on, you great lump, let’s get you some breakfast.’

 He comes through with a silver-haired man, a boy really, draped over his shoulder, and Sam frowns.

‘Is that - ?’ he starts.

‘Pietro Maximoff,’ Laura smiles. ‘Piet, this is Sam.’

‘He’s Falcon,’ Lila adds, ‘works with Uncle Steve.’

Piet’s eyes are very blue, and he’s shaking a bit, clutches at Clint’s arms as he gets lowered into what had been Clint’s chair.

‘Another bird?’ he asks, and then laughs. ‘It is nice to meet you, Sam.’

‘I heard you were dead.’

‘I prefer it that way,’ Piet says. ‘It’s easier for me.’

Sam catalogues the sad twist of his smile, the dark circles, the way he carefully moves his hands out of the way when Clint puts a plate down for him, and an idea begins to form.

* * *

_1999_

Nat wears a pretty dress, something low cut and short, with lace and satin ribbon detailing and her hair is piled high on her neck. It’s a very pretty look, Coulson thinks, and the eyes she draws as she pretends to totter on heels that are too high to be practical certainly give away what she’s up to. She’s going to flirt her way around the audience, get bought drinks, get information. She’s good at it. She’ll giggle and touch arms and bat her false eyelashes, and she’ll get everything support, miles away in a safehouse in Denver, could ever need.

Thank God Clint is already in the changing rooms, and can’t see his surrogate all but flash her private parts to every male eyeball in a ten feet radius.

Coulson’s job is to mingle with the boxing agents, with the bettors and so on, to get information from them. He’s _technically_ representing Clint here, so he does need to establish himself. He fakes it well enough, and brags (probably too confidently) about his boxer. He keeps one eye on Nat the entire time; she can handle herself, but he’s not sure she’ll handle this. No one except Level 8 up has access to the entirety of Clint’s file, as per Phil’s request. He’d wanted to block it entirely, but Fury had told him that was stupid and no one would trust the Barton boy as far as they could throw him. Any curious agent could look him up, see he was brought in during the spring quarter of ’91, but not where he came from, could see his skills but not where he learn them. Most of his mission dossier is classified, and much of the information around his genealogy and biological information is redacted. About the only thing remaining on there is a bullet point list of his skills, and a longer list of his known injuries.

It doesn’t look great, admittedly.

Still, Clint has apparently kept ninety percent of his life before S.H.I.E.L.D. (and probably most of it afterwards, because Nat shows no sign of knowing jack and shit about Laura) secret from her, and Nat is not going to take that too kindly. She’ll understand, of course, but Clint knows everything about her, and Coulson knows she’d hoped he would have returned the favour by now. He’d been honest about a lot of things in the early days, too honest. She knows about the circus, about the petty crimes, about the state he was in when Coulson found him. He’s been honest about his missions, about his brother, glossing over his father when she asked, talking fondly of his mother. But he’d kept the boxing out of it, kept Laura out of it.

Coulson glances at the program in his hand; Clint’s there, under a false name, in the second block, a newcomer fighting a crowd favourite. This could end poorly. Coulson has no doubt Clint will win, because he’s got no choice, and he’s had ten years to hone his punches, but nobody wants to root for the underdog against the sure victor.

The first three matches are agony. Nat sips at a tall drink, and smiles prettily when greasy men with sweaty palms flirt with her. Coulson brags about his boxer’s skills, and waits with tense shoulders for Clint’s match.

He’s the second match of the second block, and that first match nearly snaps Coulson’s last nerve.

  The announcers call for the next match, and Coulson hopes Clint’s warned them that he’s deaf and will need a gesture rather than his name being called to know when to go to the ring, because in-ear aids and headgear or not, he’s not stupid enough to leave them in, surely. The announcer calls the favourite; the roar of applause is deafening, and when Clint’s false name is called, William something or other, there is a polite cheer and applause, but nothing nearly to the level of the favourite’s. Clint is an unknown in the ring, a newcomer to an established circuit. No one knows him to cheer for him.

Coulson looks at Nat as Clint climbs into the ring, and she’s glaring. Feeling him look, she turns her glare to him. He quickly looks away, back to Clint.

He looks healthier than he did the last time Coulson saw him in the ring, better all around. There are fading scratches down his back that get a few titters from the other agents, and Coulson rolls his eyes. What an ass, he thinks. Don’t go prepare for the mission or anything, no, go back to your girlfriend. What an ass. At least he can’t see the shadow of his ribs when Clint draws his arms up now, just the shadow of muscle. Amazing what a few pounds can do, Coulson thinks, and even more amazing what seventy can do.

Clint rolls his shoulders, cracks his neck, and settles in for the ref to start the match. Coulson flicks his gaze between Clint’s quick jabs and quicker dodges, and Nat, who is flirting a little more determinedly now. It doesn’t take long for him to win the match, a clear knock-out, and the audience are startled.

He looks at Coulson. Coulson looks back.

The rest of the tournament goes much the same. Clint never loses, because Clint can’t afford to lose. During the half-time break, Nat goes and kicks him in the shin for keeping it from her, and he promises that he’ll buy her dinner or a cat or something to make it up to her, and she tells him to be careful in the ring.

He almost loses the last match. Almost. But not quite. Even though he goes flat on his ass in the third round, he knocks his last opponent into the ropes and onto the mat with one solid punch, and he is declared winner. He’s got blood streaming from his nose, and he’s losing feeling in his hand, a couple of his ribs bruised if not broken, and he’s exhausted.

Spitting his mouth guard out, he, Coulson and his “moral support” Nat (though it isn’t without a few obscene looks) are led up to their target’s office.

* * *

_2012_

It’s not like waking. It’s not even like coming to, like being brought out of unconsciousness, it’s like – like – it’s like cognitive recalibration. No, no it’s not. It’s too dark for that, too empty. Like he’s nothing at all, just a sensation of thought made flesh.

It starts in the palm of his hand, a warmth settled familiar and perfect, like it belongs. He thinks it probably does, else it wouldn’t feel so nice there. His hand, perhaps, the sensation of movement, it curls around the warmth, traps it, holds it. He needs to hold onto it, he knows, has to stay where he can feel it. He doesn’t remember what was there before, just that it was cold. Blue.

The blue flares like lightning across the horizon, and he flinches, draws away from it. His – his son, he thinks. His son is scared of lightning. Was scared. He’s not scared now. Lightning now means – means – it means Thor. The God of Thunder. It means heroes. Salvation.

Is this salvation? This warmth in his hand? It’s weighty, heavy, dragging him down. No, no, it’s pulling him up, dragging him _out_. He’s leaving the darkness, and the blue recedes again, a shadow across the back of his eyelids, a grin stretched too wide. He shakes it away, and tightens his grip on the warmth.

Next is the noise. No, not noise. It’s softer. A – a – it isn’t a memory, he thinks. It’s like the warmth. Familiar. Real. A voice, something gentle, and the warmth blooms, up his arm, like a shot of – of – embers, embers up his veins straight into his heart, where it settles. The darkness doesn’t fall away, light doesn’t burst in. But everything feels a little more tangible. Almost as if he has a body.

As he – he – he lies there, as he lies there listening to the voice – it’s singing – singing a – a lullaby? Sunshine. Something about sunshine, about love and sunshine and sleeping. That’s a lullaby, right? He sings lullabies. To his son, and his daughter. His daughter’s only young. She’s coming on Four. Four? Four, in the autumn. The trees visible from her window had been red. He’d first seen her in the middle of the night, when he was covered in blood, aching with burnt-out adrenaline. She’s been nothing but a ray of light since.

As he lies there listening to the voice singing, he thinks to himself that it’s interesting. He’s deaf, how is it that the second thing he finds is an auditory thing? How does he hear when he’s deaf? Is this real? Does he have his hearing aids in? He thinks he tries to feel for them, but he’s not so sure. He doesn’t have a body. It’s tangible, but it’s not his. But he’s holding a hand, he’s sure of that.

He’s holding a hand, a hand he knows. It’s a hand that belongs to that voice singing the song about the sunshine, and he misses sunshine. It’s nice, sunshine. Especially when it comes in through the window in the morning, catches on her hair and makes it shine gold. She’s beautiful in those early morning moments, when he lies there and watches her before his bladder insists on being taken care of, or the dog scratches at the door, or any other number of things happen. Work stopped calling. He’d liked that, for a while. Not getting called in to deal with some crisis. That had been nice. He’d been able to watch her for as long as he liked.

God, he got lucky.

She’s still singing, or is he hearing her on repeat? He’s not sure.

He likes hearing her anyway. Several loops of the song pass before her voice catches. Not a looped recording, he thinks. She’s singing the song over and over again.

She’s crying. He keeps making her cry; it’s such a bad habit. Makes him a terrible husband.

He wants to apologise, he does. He wants to tell her that he’s so very, very sorry. He’s not been good to her these last months. He’s tried, but it’s not worked. How could it work? He’s broken, a shattered glass facsimile of himself, and every time she gets one part of him repaired, another breaks. He’s doing his best. She’s doing more than that.

She deserves so much more than him.

‘Clint?’ she asks, ‘honey, come back to me, please. Please, you promised me you’d never leave me, come on. Don’t do this to me. Please, Clint.’

He – he – he can’t remember her name. He can’t _remember her name_. Oh God, he’s been – he’s been married to her for – for – ten – eleven? Eleven years. Eleven years is a long time. How can he not remember her name?

He tries to tell her that he loves her. He can’t open a mouth he doesn’t have.

The warmth in his heart swells, dies down again, simmers beneath intangible flesh. Perhaps he has a body, and he just can’t reach it. This is what cognitive recalibration was like. Trying to fit his thoughts to his flesh. But not like this. Not like this.

Time passes.

She stops singing, but her hand stays in his. Once, he hears another voice. Salted caramel and molasses and – and – a chill sweeps through in the aftermath of the thought of _father_. No, not father. Not even fatherly. Grandpa, he thinks. Grandpa. He’d introduced the voice to his children as Grandpa.

Why does father make him so uncomfortable? What about _father_ makes his not-bones ache? He’s a father. She always says he’s a good one, a good dad. Daddyhawk. She calls him Daddyhawk. Why does she call him that? He’s not a bird.

Maybe that’s why he can’t find his body; he’s looking for the wrong one. No, no, that’s stupid. Don’t be a dummy, Clint. You aren’t a bird.

‘He’s not answering,’ she says to that caramel voice. ‘He’s – he’s _cold_. His charts – look at them – they’re all reading normal, his temperature’s _perfect_ , but he’s so cold. It’s like I’m holding ice. He hasn’t been cold like this since – do you remember that one – Phil called me in, he’d – he’d run into a trap.’

‘You’ll have to be more specific,’ the caramel voice replies, and there’s a laugh there, maybe. If you listened just right. He’s not good at listening just right. He can’t listen when he can’t hear.

‘Sorry, I’m – I can’t, Nick. I’m. What if he doesn’t come back?’

He’s right here, he wants to say. He wants to leap upright and yell it from the rooftops. I’m here, I’m alright, don’t cry, it’s okay, I’m coming home, I’ll stay this time, I promise. But he can’t say anything.

‘He will,’ Nick assures her – Nick – Grandpa Nick, tall and dark and scary to everybody but those he loved, and he loved so fiercely, defended humanity to the very bowels of hell itself. ‘He doesn’t have a choice. He’s never left you before, has he? He can’t stay away.’

There’s quiet for a moment, and then Nick adds, ‘what is it that you put on the rings? “Hawks mate for life?” He won’t leave you, Laura, he can’t. If he couldn’t leave you then, he can’t leave you now.’

 _Laura._ Her name’s _Laura._

He doesn’t need to see, doesn’t need physical form to know that she’s tearing up. The warmth of her hand digs tight; her nails. Bitten down, she’s been chewing them in nerves. She’ll have to trim them before she goes home. Cooper has delicate skin.

Cooper, he thinks, heart swelling. Cooper and Lila. His children. God, he loves them. Nick is right. He can’t leave her, can’t leave them.

‘Does Nat know?’ Laura asks, and he feels uncomfortable at the possibility, a crawling itch in the warmth of her hand, sweat prickling across his palm.                

‘No,’ Nick assures her, ‘she’s out in the field, and I’ll demote anyone who tells her to toilet scrubber in the time it takes to shove their heads down the bowl.’

They talk some more; Clint stops listening. The darkness claims him again.

More time passes. It’s hard to keep track of how much time passes.

Laura’s singing again when he finds the strength to focus on anything more than the vague throb of warmth that he’s still sure is her hand. It’s a creaky, croaky sound, rough. She’s been crying. There’s a particular pitch her voice goes when she cries. He’s heard it more than he thinks he should have. She’s not emotional by nature. He does it to her.

He stares at the blackness and wishes he could do something to help her.

It’s a different song this time, one about circles and he’s sure it’s about God and Heaven, and if there was a place he wasn’t ever going to go, it was _Heaven_. It was – this is her favourite, he recalls, her favourite lullaby. It was the lullaby her grandmother sung to her, a religious woman. Delilah. They named their daughter after her. His – his – his breath? His heart. His soul catches on the thought, and everything stops still. Then Laura’s hand squeezes and everything begins to move again, the darkness a – a little lighter now.

Gunmetal. That’s what they call it, when they need to be fancy.

It’s fucking grey.

Slowly, over the next hours, days, weeks, months, what is time, time is nothing, it’s an endless void of nothing with just her voice and her hand to guide him back, but how can he drag himself out of the darkness when he’s got no body? Slowly, the grey turns red, a pinkish colour he’s positive is the back of his eyelids. He’s looking at the back of his eyelids in bright light. She sounds clearer, singing the sunshine song again. She sounds better, like she’s slept. Like she’s had a glass of water. She never stayed hydrated. Getting her to drink was such a chore.

But he got there. He ate better, she drank better. They made each other better. He likes that they make each other better.

His body feels a little more tangible now. He can feel her skin against his, the warm weight of her hand something real. Something _real_.

Real has never seemed so good.

She stops singing when the song is done and sits there quietly. He tries to turn towards her, to find the rest of her, but everything is still numb. He can feel it, but he’s not quite matching sensation and skin just yet. The stitches aren’t complete, he’s not anchored.

‘Clint?’ she asks, and he wants to acknowledge her, to tell her he’s there. God, he wants nothing more than that. ‘I love you, you know, you dummy. I love you _so much_. Come back to me, honey, please. You’ve never been gone this long, and they say you’re getting better but – I just want you back with me, honey. I just want to be able to hold you in my arms and have you hold me back, that’s all I want. If you’re struggling, I can help you, I _can_ , but you gotta let me in. Come back to me, and let me in and we can get through this, okay? You gotta come back to me, please. God, I love you so much, Clint. So fucking much, and you’re not _here_.’

She squeezes his hand and sniffles. She’s not crying, she’s got no tears left. But she’s sad. The guilt aches.

I’m sorry, he breathes, but the darkness is still wrapped around him, holding him tight, and it doesn’t get any further than his respirator.

(He doesn’t know it, but there’s a blip on the monitor, a breath caught and almost lost between the lines. Laura hears it catch on the filter, and looks up, but by the time she’s focused on the monitor, it’s gone.)

After some time passes, a shorter time, a time he can almost measure, she starts singing the sunshine song again. He can follow the words this time, hear them, count the beats. He sometimes plays the guitar, when he sings it. The babies like it when daddy plays the guitar, he thinks. He’s been learning more upbeat tunes. They like dancing, and Laura’s good at teaching them.

He focuses hard, focuses more than he’s ever had to before – everything else was so easy, a trained response. Aiming was instinctual now, like breathing. Everything was so easy. But this is hard. The hardest thing he’s ever done. Cognitive recalibration was easier. He focuses hard on the warmth of her hand, the way it fits around his like it was meant to belong there. He wonders if she’s wearing her ring. It’s the right hand, right? The correct one? He doesn’t know.

She’s halfway through the song, on the second chorus, and stops dead.

‘Clint?’ she asks. Her chair squeals as it gets knocked across the tiles. ‘Clint?’

Her free hand, the one not in his, it touches – touches – that’s his face, he thinks. She’s touching his face, fingertips shaking as they brush his cheek, his temple, the aching bruise in the socket of his eye. The shadows flit across the reddish-pink of his eyelid. He can smell her hair, he thinks. Maybe he just remembers the smell of her hair.

‘Clint, please,’ she whispers, ‘please. One more time, honey, please. Squeeze my hand one more time.’

But he can’t. He’s all focused out. He wants to apologise.

He can hear her dither, torn between staying and rushing to the nearest doctor and demanding – demanding something, whatever he needs. He wants to tell her to go. The sooner he’s back with her the sooner they can go home. The sooner he can sing to the kids.

She kisses his hand, a warm, dry press of her mouth against his knuckles, promising that she’ll be back as soon as she can be, and then the warmth is gone, and blue immediately creeps in on the corners of his eyelids, as if it was waiting. He wants to call her back, terrified that the darkness will swallow him again, that he’ll be gone for another who knows how long. He’s terrified that if he goes again he won’t ever find his way home.

He promised her that he would never ever leave her. He can’t leave her now, not now that he’s close enough to touch.

The blue creeps like ice across the windows. Eyes are the windows to the soul. He has never felt as trapped as he does right now, so locked in his own shadow. It’s going to swallow him, he knows, he’s sure. It’s going to swallow him and he’s going to be gone forever.

And then Laura is there, a blistering ray of sun, burning heat against the palm of his hand as she takes it back up, and the ice crumbles into dust, a memory best left burnt. She holds his hand so tight she might break the metacarpals.

He almost wants her to. It might help get him out of the darkness for good.

‘Clint, honey? The doctor’s here, he’s going to take a look at you, okay? He’s going to help.’

He feels familiar sensations; tugging at his eyelids, adjustments of his equipment, checks on his pulse and breathing and everything else too. He’s used to this part.

‘I think he can come off the ventilator,’ the doctor says. ‘We’ll trial him, obviously, but he’s looking the same as he always does.’

‘Meaning?’

Clint doesn’t know what the doctor does. He imagines he smiles. They’re used to him. He wonders where he is. He’s usually at the Hub, but there’s a seventh (seventh? He’s lost count, honestly) time for everything.

‘I’m not putting my name on it,’ the doctor says, ‘but I think he could be close to coming back to us.’

Laura squeezes Clint’s hand, and he tries to squeeze back, but he’s tired. Focusing on things in the dark is hard. He hopes she doesn’t leave again.

When the doctor is gone, she tells him about what the doctor has been saying as though he hadn’t heard. It’s easier to listen to her voice. She tells him about what Nick’s said to her, in the rare times she’s been out of the room. He doesn’t remember her leaving, and he hates it. He hates that he didn’t know. Something could have happened to her. She smoothes a hand over his hair, plays with the hair at his temples, just long enough to do so, tells him that Nick says that people have been asking after him. Agents he’s worked with. It’s no secret something went wrong. He was brought in secured in a hyper-bah-rick chamber – did I say that right? – so everyone who was there saw it.

‘They’re all worried about you, honey,’ she says, ‘and they want you to get better too. They want you to come back.’

His ventilator comes off, and he breathes unaided. The doctors agree that he can be left to breathe for himself now.

‘This is a good thing,’ he says, ‘he’s pretty much just napping now. He’ll be back with us soon.’

Laura tells him, when the doctor is gone, that they’ve been saying that for days.

‘I hope you do come back soon, though. I miss you. Who’s going to finish off the bedroom if you’re laid up here having a nap? Such an old man, can’t even wake up without having to have an extra two days to brace yourself.’

It takes two hours.

She’s dozing, holding his hand and folded down to rest her head on her other arm by his hip, hair spilling across his lap and fingers loose around his.

He gets his eyes half-open, and for a minute, stares at her blurry image. He honestly doesn’t remember getting himself the rest of the way. He doesn’t remember anything. He was – he was walking down the street. And now he’s here.

‘Laura?’ he croaks. There’s a tube in his throat. Talking is hard.

She stirs, but doesn’t wake. So lazy. He starts to drift, tired – what happened? Had he fought? He feels like he did in that chair, only the clout to the head was everywhere else.

All things considered; he’s had worse. Probably doesn’t look as bad as it feels, but feels worse than it is. He tries to catalogue the myriad of aches and pains and blazing agonies, but only manages to come up with; _how do I get the morphine?_ He is quite aware that such a thought is generally an indicator that he has already had too much in the way of painkiller, because he only ever wants painkillers when he’s had too many of them.

One of his many character quirks, he’ll say.

God, it hurts.

Then – then – perhaps she realises that hearing him wasn’t a dream, it sinks in past the background registry, and she jerks upright, almost yanks his arm with her. It yanks him back awake, and he makes a pathetic noise. His throat tightens around the tube, everything hurts, and he almost hacks up a lung.

‘Clint?’ she breathes, and it’s a visible struggle not to throw herself at him. ‘Oh, god, you’re back, you’re back. Honey, I was – you asshole, I love you so much.’

She grabs his face and peppers kisses all over it, presses her forehead against his and laughs. Her tears sting.

‘I – I gotta get the doctors,’ she says, presses a hard, lingering kiss between his eyes. ‘They need to – we gotta get that tube out, I need to kiss you, I swear to God, Clint, I need to kiss you.’

He wiggles his fingers, manages to make a thumbs up that pokes her hip. She straightens to look, and laughs.

Flicking his nose, she rushes to the door and yells down the corridor.

The doctor gets the tube out, Clint throws up, and soon as Laura’s got his mouth rinsed out, she’s got hers on it, and the doctor asks if they’d like him to leave.

‘Please,’ Laura says, waving a hand, barely getting her mouth off of Clint’s long enough to get the word out. ‘Shouldn’t have to ask.’

Clint manages to at least wave his hand, but trying to talk just gets Laura hushing him and a croaking noise not too dissimilar to a death rattle.

‘Clint, shush, please, honey. Doctor, go, thank you.’

He’s gracious enough to shut the door, not that either of them notice.

‘I love you,’ Laura tells him, seriously, meeting his eyes. ‘I love you _so much_.’

Clint nods, and takes a moment to focus, to concentrate, gets his hands up to touch her – to touch her and she’d asked for that, hadn’t she? To be able to hold him and have him hold her in return – so he can manage this much. He can manage to do this for her. She crumbles at the weight of his hands on her back, and he’s still attached to monitors, still got his vitals checked, still got his drip attached, got everything all in place still, but she collapses onto his chest anyway, sobs into his neck.

He rubs her back, shoves her vest up out of the way to get at her skin, trips his fingers over the mountainous range of her spine, across the smooth planes of her back, and she shivers, curls her fingers against his chest, knotting them into the fabric of his hospital gown.

‘You bastard,’ she whispers, ‘you _bastard_. I thought you’d gone for good.’

It takes him a moment to coordinate the movement, but he shakes his head, kisses her hair.

‘Never,’ he breathes. ‘Never. Gonna stay forever, promise.’

‘You said that before.’ He’s surprised his hearing aids are turned high enough to hear it. He supposes he’s only got them in because Laura put them there so he could hear her talking to him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers. ‘I’m sorry.’

She swallows thickly and pushes up to look him in the eye.

‘Don’t do it again,’ she says, ‘ _talk_ to me next time. Don’t scare me like that, Clint. God, I thought I’d lost you. I thought I’d _really_ lost you this time.’

He mouths an apology, can’t get the words past the lump in his throat. Laura kisses him again, and saves him from forcing them out. Her mouth tastes of salt and vending machine coffee.


	12. Love, Love, Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More flirting, Clint failing to deal with the consequences of his decisions, and J.A.R.V.I.S. snooping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay, lovelies, I started a new job and it's killing me. Also AUs. AUs have started happening and that's always bad for everyone involved.
> 
> Warning for implicit sex and heavy binge-drinking.

_2014_

He’s sweating, a dark V down the back of his red T-shirt, down his chest, under his arms. There’s grease up to his elbows, swiped in streaks across his face from a misguided attempt to wipe the sweat away. His hair’s sticking up in five different directions. The toolbelt slung cockeyed around his hips is dragging his paint-stained jeans low, and when he bends, Laura can see more than just the dimples at the base of his spine.

Biting at her lip, she leans on the door frame for a moment, watching him work. He’s working on the shed again, or he had been, but then he’d gone to the barn for something and ended up hauling out one of his bikes to fix her up. He’d been talking about a quad bike, about taking the too-adventurous Lila out for a spin around the fields, and Laura had told him no. She suspects Clint is keeping his eye out for one anyway.

‘You gonna keep staring?’ he calls, and straightens, hikes his jeans a half-inch before turning to her. A bead of sweat rolls down his temple. ‘Or you gonna do something about it?’

Laura glances back; Fury is visiting again, and is currently sat watching a Scooby Doo episode with the kids.

‘Nick?’ she calls.

He glances over his shoulder, takes one look at her, and waves her off.

‘Go on,’ he says, ‘I’ll keep an eye on them.’

Laura is down the porch steps and crashing into her stinking, sweaty husband before he’s finished talking. Clint’s skin is summer-slick under her hands, and he’s careful to keep his greasy hands away from her as she unhooks the toolbelt, lets it clang to the floor, but he kisses back just as hard, chasing when she pulls away.

‘Come with me,’ she whispers, and offers her hand.

He takes it, and lets her tug him along, towards the woods.

‘Where are we going?’ he asks once, and she smiles over her shoulder.

He’s learnt to trust that smile, because that smile means good things, and only good things.

‘Trust me,’ she says, and he nods.

‘I do.’

A pretty flush creeps across her face then, and disappears in the low, cool shadows of the trees overhead. He watches her as she leads him; he knows where they’re going, of course he does, he knows this land like he knows no other. They’re heading towards the creek, and glances back, sees the last corner of the house disappear against the tree line.

‘You know, there’s a perfectly good shower back at the house,’ he says, ‘it’s got a high pressure head and everything.’

‘I’ll give you high pressure head,’ she mumbles under her breath, and he laughs too loud, causing birds nesting close by to scatter.

‘You will, will you?’ he teases, and stops, tugs her hand to bring her back towards him. ‘I find that very hard to believe.’

She presses close, his skin sun-hot against hers, damp and sticky in the best ways.

‘You think so?’ she asks, reaches up to thumb his dark circles, running her hands higher, up into his hair. It slicks back, and he looks old for half a second before she roughs it up with a good scrub of her hands, and he’s back to looking the same as ever. ‘I think I can do what I like. I’m not so sure you can handle high pressure head.’

 He laughs some more, and tugs her in by the belt loops of her shorts to kiss her slow and soft, careful brushes of his mouth against hers, the kind of kisses that have always made her weak in the knee.

‘Oh, I love you,’ she breathes when she finds it in her to pull away. Her heart’s jack-hammering against her throat, the sunlit-gold of her eyes dark.

Smiling, he bumps their noses, presses a last butterfly kiss to the corner of her mouth before she starts tugging him along again, her stride longer now, determined as she is to get him to the creek.

The creek hasn’t changed in years, whisper-quiet with just the bubbling of the water some ways down. It’s peaceful here, so deep into the woods that they’ve come to suspect that no one else who might wander here knows it exists. It’s hard to hear the water from as little as twenty feet away, the trees are so densely packed, but that’s nice, that’s good. It means they won’t be disturbed.

‘When was the last time you came here?’ Laura asks, as quiet as the water, hands already under Clint’s T-shirt, thumbs hooked to push it up and over his head.

He obligingly lifts his arms, and hums. ‘Last summer, I think, maybe longer. After New York, though. Long after New York. After I was – after that. After.’

She drops the T-shirt, yanks hers over her head, and presses close to him.

‘So not since S.H.I.E.L.D.?’ she asks.

He shakes his head, ducks it to kiss at her jaw, down to the joint, and she laughs, breathless, at the nip of his teeth. Her hands wriggle their way in between them, make short work of his button fly and his boxers, only to be stymied by his boots.

‘Lazy,’ she chides with a smile, but drops to her haunches to unlace his boots anyway. It’s not the first time she’s gotten him undressed, and she’s sure it won’t be the last. S.H.I.E.L.D. might be gone, but Stark’s been making noise about the Avengers, and she’s sure Clint will have to report for duty at some point. Best to make use of him while she’s still got him, she supposes, and finishes pulling the laces loose.

He kicks his boots off and steps out of his jeans and boxers in the same motion, tugs her back up by the hands she extends.

‘I do love you naked,’ she says, gives him a slow once-over. ‘Such a handsome man. _My_ handsome man.’

‘Only one I want to be,’ he replies, and reaches for her shorts, makes short work of those, too, and she’s easier to undress, has no laces on her sandals, no buckles or straps or anything, except the hooks on her bra, and he’s got more than enough practice at that.

‘I don’t know why I bother wearing one around you,’ she snorts, and shuffles it down her arms and onto the pile of clothes.

‘I don’t know why you bother wearing one I didn’t buy,’ he says.

‘You did buy that one.’

He looks at it again. It’s a plain, simple bra, with a bow, but no other adornments, in that pretend peach skin tone that doesn’t match Laura’s skin at all but does the job, he supposes.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely. But why worry about it when I’m naked?’

This is a very good point, and he stops thinking about her underwear. When they first moved here, when the babies were still just that, and Nat or Coulson were free to babysit, they came here often, for the peace and quiet and privacy it afforded them. They haven’t been here recently, haven’t had time, what with S.H.I.E.L.D. and before that, Lila had needed them, and Clint hadn’t been in any fit state to force a hard reset on himself while elbow deep in water.

Laura pulls him into the pool, gathered at the base of one fall and the top of another, but Clint doesn’t think a foot really constitutes a waterfall so much as it does a pebble fountain. They used to have one that they could plug in, back in Manhattan, before the farm. When Laura was pregnant with Cooper, the sound played havoc with her bladder and she threw it down the emergency stairs. He’d stared at her, but she reminded him that he dealt with their pretend break-up by throwing his phone out of a street-side window.

It’s as cold as he remembers it, silt between his toes, and he barks out a laugh at the chill. She smiles at him, pulls him close, pulls his arms around her and laces her fingers behind his neck. He has to bend to fit against her, and she laughs when they almost topple, staggering back into the pool wall, and she hikes a leg around his hip.

‘Just like old times?’ she asks, breathes it against his mouth.

‘Ain’t old yet,’ he whispers back.

(He’s in New York when she texts him, working out in the in-Tower gym; _call me when u get privacy. Need to show u something._ )

* * *

_1995_

It’s raining when they leave the bar, Clint’s arm warm around her shoulders, laughter warmer against her crown. She yelps when the rain hits her bare arms, and he laughs, shrugs out of his jacket to drape it over her shoulders.

‘Loser,’ he says, fond, and ducks his head to kiss her hair, mouth sticking beer-warm against a couple of strands.

‘Don’t eat my hair,’ she laughs, and runs her hand through it, gets her hair away from his renegade mouth. ‘Come on, hero, get me home before I get sick.’

‘Aw, live a little!’ he crows, and whirls on the spot, arms spread to take in the frankly lashing rain.

It had been overcast all day, spitting here and there, but sometime between Laura going to the bathroom and Clint getting the sixth round of beers and cheap shots, the heavens had opened and the drains had been quick to fill, resulting in inches-deep puddles that Clint whirls through, and he huffs when rain soaks through the soft canvas of his shoes.

‘You dummy,’ Laura laughs, and Clint gives her that lopsided grin she’s determined to marry one day. ‘C’mere, ‘s cold.’

He lopes back to her, and she loops her arm through his. They’re already soaked through, so they dawdle – stagger, really, it’s been too many rounds and even more shots – their way down the street in the general direction of _home_. Laura’s sure Clint’s going a couple of blocks out of the way to get home, but whatever. Whatever. They’re already wet.

 For not being the absolute middle of the night, the streets are silent, only the rain to provide any kind of noise. It drowns out the sound of cars a few blocks away, the ever-present buzz of life that always seems to echo around the brownstones, and Laura laughs to herself.

When Clint hums, questioning, she says, ‘I like it like this. Nice and quiet. It’s real nice, don’t you think? Peaceful. Nice and quiet.’

‘Yeah,’ he agrees with a nod. ‘Real nice. Be better if it wasn’t raining though.’

They turn the corner, and halfway down the street, a car skids around the corner, radio blasting at full volume through the open window, zooming off past them and splashing them with the water collecting at the kerb. Laura squeals, and hops away from the kerb, whining loud.

‘It’s like, eleven,’ Clint says, ignoring Laura’s whining, ‘why’s he playing music so loud?’

Sulking over her more-soaked leg, she grumbles, ‘at least it was a good song.’

‘I know all the words,’ Clint tells her.

‘What a lie!’ she laughs, shoves at him, ‘no one knows all the words, shut up!’

‘I do too!’ he laughs back, and stumbles backwards, keeping his feet through sheer dumb luck more than any training S.H.I.E.L.D. ever gave him. ‘I know all the words!’

Laura laughs, and skip-stumbles after him. ‘You’re such a liar, Clint Barton. You’re a _liar_. No one knows all the words to _Bad Touch_ , not a single person in the entire universe.’

‘I know them,’ he tells her, and his eyes flash under the streetlamp they pass under. ‘I know them, you listen to this.’

It takes him a couple of goes to get the tempo right, but then he’s off, skipping backwards and singing to her. He’s horrendously off-key, but he’s got all the words right, and he takes Laura’s hands at the chorus, pulls her along with him, and she leans in, sings the chorus back to him. They must look a right pair, dancing in the rain and caterwauling _Bad Touch_ to each other like it’s the most poignant of love songs.

Honestly, Laura’s kind of impressed that Clint can skip backwards, sing and do a very smooth pelvic thrust at the same time, but Clint is a man of many skills, and that, apparently, is one of them. His dancing leaves a lot to be desired, but she didn’t fall in love with him for his fancy footwork. She’s howling with laughter by the time he’s done swinging around a streetlamp, and he stumbles into a dumpster when she doesn’t warn him about a corner. Cackling, she pulls him away from it by the shirt collars, and he laughs against her mouth, hums for a moment before pulling away to continue.

‘I love you,’ she calls to him, and he grins at her, boyish and that’s the kind of smile he knows gets him laid, he _knows_. ‘You absolutely are not seducing me with awful pop songs, don’t you look at me like that.’

‘You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals,’ he croons back, and she kicks a puddle at him.

It does nothing to him, but he just laughs around the next line.

She pushes her hair from her face, and continues to follow him as he rounds off the last of the song.

‘There!’ he crows, points at her, ‘see? See? Told you I knew ‘em. Told you.’

Laughing, she reaches for his extended hand, drags him close by it. ‘Told you not to look at me like that.’

He grins, fingers finding her belt loops and tugging her close. ‘Did it work?’ he asks, breath hot against her mouth. ‘Are you seduced?’

If she wasn’t drunk, she probably wouldn’t shove her hand down the front of his jeans. Probably.

But she’s drunk, and she does, and he yelps.

‘Your hands are cold!’ he tells her, as though he’s offended.

‘Then don’t seduce me in the rain, you dummy,’ she laughs.

It takes him a few goes to manage to pull away from her and her cold hands, but he manages it, and gets her home, just about.

* * *

_2016_

‘Right!’ Tony says after breakfast, slapping his palms onto the table.

Clint peers at him through half-open eyes, and eventually huffs out a breath.

‘What?’ he grunts.

‘Right,’ Tony repeats. ‘Right, you need to drive me to – what’s a decent city in this state? Laura, Laura help, what’s a decent city?’

She squints back at him. The dark smudges under her eyes have been getting better, but she’s even worse about waking up these days.

‘I ‘unno,’ she slurs around a mouthful of cereal. ‘Iowa City, I guess?’

Tony turns his nose up. ‘I’m stealing your husband, okay? I’m gonna take him back to New York with me, he can’t avoid it. Just for a couple of days.’

Clint rubs his face, and he looks no less like a grumpy old man for it.

‘Why? Why do you need to take me to New York? There’s nothing in New York ‘cept Wanda.’

Tony ignores him. ‘Is that alright?’ he asks Laura. ‘That I’m stealing him.’

‘Bring him back,’ Laura tells him, ‘steal him, but bring him back.’

He promises to do so. Clint reminds them that he is not a piece of meat.

‘You’re a lovely piece of meat,’ Laura assures him.

Tony halfway convinces himself that she said he’s got a lovely piece of meat, but he thinks that he’s making it up. But then Laura catches his eye and looks too innocent, and he convinces himself the rest of the way that he’d heard her right the first time.

‘Why do you want me in New York, anyway?’ Clint asks.

‘None of your business,’ Tony replies. When Clint doesn’t stop flatly staring at him, he admits, ‘you need to be fitted for a suit, and I know some good tailors.’

‘I have a suit?’

‘That _thing_ is not a suit, Clinton,’ Tony sniffs.

Clint exhales hard through his nose, and pretends like he’s interested in a story about Britain and some visit from some foreign dignitary or another.

* * *

_1994_

The walk back from Laura’s is the longest he’s ever had to take. He’d walked the length of the cemetery when they’d buried his parents, Barney a few strides ahead, leaving him to make his own way across the rows and rows and rows and rows and – when he’d been nine, it had felt like an age or three to get to the open, gaping wounds in the earth where the plain, state-mandated coffins were being lowered. It had felt like he’d lived every lifetime he’d passed as he walked across the grass that day.

This feels longer. It feels endless, like he’s walking on a treadmill made of concrete, moving in place.

It takes two goes to get the door to his apartment open, and Lucky is immediately there, tail wagging, climbing up to lick his face. For the first time since bringing the dog back to his home, into his life, Clint puts his palm on Lucky’s nose and pushes the dog back to the floor.

‘Down, boy,’ he says, soft, quiet, and locks the door behind him.

His boots hit the wall hard, leave black rubber smears on the old paint. He looks at it, and then moves to the phone. Two new messages. For a second, his finger lingers on the play button, and then he moves, leans around the cabinet the phone is sat on, answer machine still blinking with unheard messages, and he pulls the cables out of the wall.

Lucky follows him as he goes to the bedroom.

‘I’m just gonna go to be – ‘

He cuts himself off, stands in the doorway, looks at the rumpled, twisted sheets, unmade from where Laura stayed over two nights ago. He hadn’t gone to bed last night. He can see the way she sleeps in the fold of the blankets, the curve of her leg in the crease of the bed-sheet. Her hair spills over the pillows when she sleeps, always leaves it loose even though he always rolls onto it, an earth-brown halo, chocolate, fresh, steaming coffee, warm earth. He thinks of the gaping wounds that were his parents’ graves. He thinks of the squat, granite block, engraved with his mother’s name. He thinks of the warm, mid-summer earth, compact and scabbing, two weeks, a month, a year after her burial, the way it had been undisturbed but nothing had grown. Just a sandy, empty lot where her body was rotting.

He swallows, thick and salt-rough, turns away, moves back to the couch.

‘You know what, pup?’ he says, flops onto the couch. It creaks under his weight, and he flops to his side, head on the seat. ‘Here’ll do just fine. I’m fine here.’

Lucky comes to sit next to him for a few minutes, watching him carefully as he stares at nothing. Then he hops to his feet, goes to the door, and whines.

‘Lucky,’ Clint calls.

The dog continues to ignore him, whining at the door. When Clint doesn’t move, he paws at the door, keening at the handle.

‘Lucky,’ Clint repeats, sharper. ‘Come here. Heel. Come. Lucky.’

The Labrador ignores him and continues to whine.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Clint shoves himself to his feet, and looks at his dog.

‘You wanna go out?’ he asks, figures he has been in all day, he probably does need to go out. ‘Alright boy, let’s go.’

He grabs a couple of bags from the counter, shoves them in his pocket, and goes to the door. Lucky behaves all the way down to the courtyard, and then he’s shoving through the half-open gate. It’s not time for a walk, so he’s got no need to demand to leave the courtyard.

‘Fucking Christ,’ Clint sighs, and follows him, yanking to gate open to get through.

It doesn’t take long for Clint to realise where Lucky is heading, but when he picks up his feet to chase, rather than follow, his dog, Lucky takes off running, and Clint has to actually _run_ to keep up. It doesn’t take long to catch him, and after getting alongside, he grabs his collar and hauls them both to a stop.

‘Bad dog,’ he says, because it’s late in the evening, and he just had to chase his dog a block and a half in the direction of his ex-girlfriend’s apartment through alleys and he’s in no mood to jump fences but Lucky’s found holes in the fences to crawl through that Clint can’t.

Lucky stares up at him, doleful, and Clint stares back, exasperated, but not without sadness of his own.

‘I’m sorry, boy,’ he says, and crouches to pet the dog’s head with both hands, rubbing his neck where his collar dug. ‘I’m sorry. You can’t see her no more. I’m sorry.’

Lucky looks, briefly, like he understands. He’s a smart dog, he’ll know that Laura’s out of bounds.

Then he gets up and continues on like Clint didn’t just chase him between buildings.

It’s not even as if it’s a short road to Laura’s apartment; they’ve got to go over the bridge, or through the subway. Since Clint doesn’t drive domestically, not with Lucky anyway, and refuses to pay the cab fare for a ride to Manhattan, subway it is.

‘Come on,’ he says, ‘we’ll get pizza, okay? We’ll get pizza, and we’ll go home.’

Lucky looks torn, turning on the spot as Clint starts down the street back the way they came, and eventually follows his owner, waiting patiently while Clint calls from a payphone for a pizza to be delivered to his apartment. It arrives not long after they do, and Clint lets him eat most of it, too caught up in the bottom of his bottle to pay much attention to how much pizza the dog’s eating.

Three bottles down, he sprawls out on the couch and stares at the ceiling, watches the street lights and the headlights from passing cars illuminate the ceiling in strips.

Seven bottles, and the light sways, an incomplete 3D print spread out like fingers across his ceiling. He breathes. Lucky snores on his bed in the corner, foot kicking against the floor, nails scrabbling against the wood.

Twelve bottles, and it’s hard to keep his eyes open, so he doesn’t. He dreams of warmth against his side, a pressure on his shoulder, whispers in his ears.

No, no, the whispers are real, out of dream, in the waking world. He tries to ignore them, but he’s being hauled upright, and his brain does its best to stay on the couch where he’d rather it was.

‘Clint? Clint, you with me? Come on, wakey-wakey.’

He peels his eyes open, stickier than normal. Tears, they’re sticky with tears. Not like him to cry. He blinks, tries to clear the stinging pain that waking up brought, but Coulson’s stood in front of the window, holding his shoulders and watching him with a creased brow. Clint can just about make it out against the halo of morning sunlight behind him.

‘It’s not like you to drink yourself to sleep,’ he’s saying, when Clint can focus on him.

His head’s pounding, a beat against the back of his eyes, like his optic nerves are the strings of a harp or a guitar, like a tune is being played out on his nerve endings.

‘Was – it’s not like Laura to leave you asleep on the couch, either,’ Coulson adds, straightening up.

His body forms a shield between Clint’s eyes and the sunlight, and for a blissful second, Clint can almost _think_. But then the bastard moves and Clint recoils, shrinking back into the couch, where the darkness of the seat is a blessed sanctuary.

‘Did you two fight?’ he asks, ‘never known you to fight, but everyone has to at some point, I guess. I mean, we joke Nick’s married to the job, and he’s always fighting with the board.’

‘Please stop talking,’ Clint grumbles, and tries to become part of the couch.

 There’s a clatter from the kitchenette, and Clint whines, drags his knees up to his chest, kneels with his face pressed into the couch cushions.

‘Oh, grow up, Clint,’ Coulson snorts. ‘You got drunk, handle your own hangover.’

Clint waves two fingers at him. Lucky gets up and goes to greet Coulson, leaving Clint in a heap on the couch.

It takes several rounds of toast and several more cups of coffee, but he manages to get himself functioning enough to ask why Coulson’s there.

‘Got a mission for you,’ he says, and gestures at the manila folder on the coffee table. ‘Read through it, dispatch is in six hours. It would have been twelve if you’d answered your phone last night. Guess Laura’s more interesting though, eh?’

 Clint winces, and Lucky’s ears drop. Coulson doesn’t notice.

The mission takes the better part of two days. When Clint gets back, the milk’s spoiled. He doesn’t buy more, and orders pizza in. The house is achingly silent without Laura there waiting for him, and he hasn’t missed her like he does when he almost goes to bed, hesitating a few steps from the sweet haven that is his bed. But the sheets are still rumpled, and he can still smell her perfume, faint on the pillows.

There’s a bottle of vodka in the cabinet in the kitchen, and he pulls it and a glass down, heads to the couch. There isn’t anything interesting on TV, so he puts it on a rerun of _The Bold and The Beautiful_ , vaguely recalls that he’s seen this episode several times before. He pours himself a shot.

And then he pours a second. A third. Five more.

The TV blurs, the room sways, and he lies down. Lucky comes to lie next to him, under his hand, and he scratches at the pup’s head, behind his ears. On the TV, some plotline happens, and he vaguely remembers it.

Morning comes sooner than he realises, and it makes his head hurt.

 ‘Stop getting drunk, Clint,’ he tells himself, as he stumbles to his feet. ‘Not doin’ you no good, kiddo. No good.’

Lucky follows him through to the bathroom, watches him watch his face and brush his teeth and stare at himself in the mirror.

‘I’m sorry, Lucky,’ he says, ‘didn’t mean to sleep in so late. Let’s go get breakfast.’

They go for a nice walk around Brooklyn, though Clint does have to pull him away from the subway twice, and Clint buys something nice from a deli for breakfast. He gives most of it to the dog.

After a couple of hours, they head back home. Clint collapses onto the couch, sits staring at the still-on TV.

The news tells him that there’s going to be a storm. He hopes Laura doesn’t stay out in it, and reaches for the glass, with a shot left. He must have fallen asleep before he drank it. He drinks it now. It burns his throat.

Lucky stares at him.

At some point between days three and four, Clint throws his phone out of the window, cables, cradle and receiver. Just straight out of the window. He’d plugged it in and hovered over the digits for Laura’s number. He’d almost dialled.

The phone had to go. So it did. Straight out the window into a thousand pieces four floors down on the concrete. A group of boys playing basketball in the street had hollered about the sudden explosion of parts. Clint had closed the window and retreated to the couch.

It’s the shouting that finally gets his wallowing caught. Actually, it’s probably the broken lamp that does it, but the incoherent screaming definitely doesn’t do him any favours.

He sits on the couch, puts his head in his hands, cradles the headache banging behind his eyes, pounding against his temples. At least the dog’s stopped fucking _whining_.

‘Lucky?’ he croaks, extends a hand. ‘I’m sorry, boy, I’m sorry, c’mere.’

Tail down, he slinks over, pushes his hand under the loose fingers Clint waves in his direction, and turns into them to get ear rubs.

‘I’m sorry,’ Clint repeats. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you.’

Lucky inches closer and puts his head on Clint’s lap, huffs out a breath. His tail wags once, twice, and falls still again.

‘I know,’ Clint murmurs, ‘I really did it this time, eh? Really fucked it up.’

The dog whines, and Clint sighs, scratches behind his ear.

‘I’ll take you on a long walk tomorrow, promise. Been a bad dad, haven’t I?’ he chuckles, without mirth. ‘It’s been a bad week.’

God knows Lucky knows that; Clint hasn’t left the apartment except to take Lucky out for a walk. It should be twice a day, but he’s lucky – ha! – to only get a couple of hours out. Sitting at the door and whining had become normal for the pup, because Clint had learnt the difference between the whine for the toilet and the whine for Laura and he’d learnt to ignore the latter. Lucky hadn’t stopped either way, though, and stayed whining at the door until finally, finally, a week of nothing but whining and silence and the clink of a bottle against the tabletop, Clint had snapped.

It had started as a sharp word, a harsh, ‘stop that,’ which Lucky had ignored, and after pawing at the door and whining for his momma, Clint had twisted his ear.

‘Don’t,’ he’d snapped, ‘she’s not coming back. She’s gone.’

The guilt had set in at the whine then, and after rubbing, gentle, at the dog’s ear, he’d punched the wall. One punch had become two, become a half-dozen. The exposed brick had grazed his knuckles, and the tantrum had grown, exploding out from his heart and swallowing him whole until he’d thrown the lamp on the phone table into the wall. The glass and ceramic had shattered, and lay in pieces on the floor. He’s cursed himself blue, called himself all the names under the sun and he didn’t care how loud he yelled it, because he deserved to hear what a piece of shit he was. She was single-handedly the best thing to ever happen to him and he fucking left her, dropped her like hot coal.

As the anger – anger at himself, the worst anger he’d felt since he was nine and staring up at the social workers come to take him away from his empty house with an emptier heart – subsided, he collapsed onto the couch, and here he sits, Lucky’s head in his lap and his head in his hand.

He reaches for the bottle on the table, and shakes it. It’s almost empty. He could probably neck what’s left of it, and he considers it.

Vodka’s not great for a migraine. Nothing except sleep really, is good for a migraine. He doesn’t want to sleep. Since getting back from that mission, he’s not really done anything except sleep. If he’s not been asleep, he’s been drinking. He can usually remember to order a pizza. He doesn’t remember if he eats it.

The boxes are stacked up on the counter. He should probably throw them out. There’s a lot of things he should do. Scrub the blood from his knuckles off the brick work. Clear up the broken lamp. Replace his demolished phone, probably still on the concrete outside. Buy more dog food, he knows Lucky’s getting low.

He needs food too. Pizza is not a good diet.

Laura wouldn’t let him be like this. But Laura is not here. That’s the problem.

Laura, Laura, Laura, his mind rattles, bouncing her name across his skull, and it hurts. It hurts in his heart, in his belly, in his – his – in his throat.

‘I’m gonna puke,’ he tells the dog.

Somehow he manages to stumble to the toilet to throw up in it before scrubbing his face and swilling his mouth out with water.

He downs the last of the vodka.

There’s a knock at the door a few hours later.

‘Clint? Clint, are you in there? Clint, open the door. Clint come on, open up. Don’t make me kick the door in, you know I hate kicking doors in.’

Silence reigns. Good. Good, he likes silence.

‘Clint, I’m gonna do it, okay? Don’t come to the door, I’m kicking it in.’

The fucker does it, too. Clint is lazily indignant, stares at the now-open door, and Coulson immediately presses a hand to his face.

‘Right,’ he says. ‘Okay. Okay, Clint, this is – are you serious right now? You’re doing this?’

He toes some shards of lamp out of the way and shuts the door, wedges it shut before climbing over the upended table, and picks his way over to the couch. It’s about the only thing still the right way up.

‘What happened?’ he asks, ‘was there a fight? Did someone get in?’

Clint rolls his eyes, and reaches up to pat Coulson’s face.

‘No,’ he says, slurs. ‘No, no one got in. ‘M alone. Way it should be. Alone. ‘S all I deserve. Bein’ alone.’

Coulson takes a second to process this.

‘No one deserves to be alone, Clint, don’t be a dummy. Come on, up you get – Jesus Christ have you eaten _anything_? I could set fire to you with that breath alone.’

Clint sways, dangerously, equilibrium lost, and Coulson braces his feet to hold him.

‘What happened, then? Your neighbours called, they’re worried about you.’

‘Tell ‘em not to be. Not worth the worry.’

‘That’s quite enough of that. Tell me what happened, Clint. Tell me what you did. We can fix it.’

‘Dumped her,’ he says, ‘no, no. Let her go. Let her – let her be happy. Not gonna be happy with me. Had to let her go.’

Coulson looks like he wants to pinch his nose, but he’s using both hands to keep his agent upright. ‘You don’t get to make that decision for her.’

‘Sure I do,’ Clint says with an angry little smile. ‘One of us has to be smart. Not gonna be her, is it? Doesn’t know me like I know me.’

‘I wonder if you know yourself at all,’ Coulson replies. ‘Right, come on, you need to sober up, and we need to get this place tidied. And we need to get the door replaced, I guess.’

Admittedly, Coulson does most of the work; Clint mostly just nurses coffee in the kitchenette and stays out of the way. As soon as he’s sober, Coulson’s dragging him in and giving him high level missions, ones that need him to think, to focus, to pay attention. Anything to take his mind off his own – it’s not even self-loathing, it’s beyond that. Coulson doesn’t want to put a name to what Clint’s feeling, because he’s not stupid, he knows it’s heartbreak. But he doesn’t want to put that name on what Clint’s feeling, it’s not fair. Clint deserves better. He deserves Laura, but he’s convinced himself otherwise.

‘You’re a bird-brain, you know that?’ he says once over the radio, as Clint sits perched on a roof in pelting rain waiting for his target.

‘Caw caw,’ Clint replies, and takes the shot.

* * *

_2015_

Laura is the first up, but it’s her turn to take Nathaniel during the night, so when she gets up in the early hours to feed him, because Nathaniel has had enough of sleeping and wants cuddles with his momma, she is not surprised in the least to find Steve still asleep on the couch, and Bucky tucked up in a blanket cocoon on the army bed a few feet away from him. As soon as she steps over the threshold, they’re both jerking awake, lifting their heads to look at her. Their hair is a mess, eyes sticky, noses wrinkled. They could be brothers, and it’s that kind of innocent humour that’ll keep her content for days.

‘Sorry,’ she mouths, and offers them a smile.

They nod blearily at her, in almost perfect unison, and drop their heads back onto their pillows, eyes shut. She waits, and within a few minutes, they’re both asleep. Sure that they won’t wake again, she heads through to the kitchen to make up a bottle.

* * *

_1994_

Laura wakes late, and lies in bed for a few moments before deciding no, she does need to go to the bathroom, and swings out of bed to go and deal with her bladder. Clint is nowhere to be seen, but that’s not even remotely a surprise anymore; honestly, she’d have been more concerned if he’d still been in bed. She finds him in the living room, his couch shoved to the side, and he’s doing push-ups against the wall, only you know, on his hands.

Because that’s totally normal at twenty-past nine on a Saturday morning.

There’s cartoons on the TV, and he can’t possibly be enjoying them when he’s upside down, but as she stands in the doorway to the bathroom watching him, he seems to be at least acknowledging what’s going on.

‘Morning, honey,’ she says, and he waves a foot at her.

‘Morning, sweetheart,’ he replies, and she moves to catch him if he falls. ‘Don’t stand there, I’ll kick you when I go down.’

‘I’ll catch you.’

‘Your nose,’ he says with an audible shrug, and she catches his ankles when they teeter away from the wall.

After a couple more push-ups, he’s bending his knees, and she slowly lowers him down to the carpet, and he waits for the blood to stop rushing before he lifts his head to look at her, leaning up to get a kiss or three.

‘What,’ she hums against his mouth, tasting just sweaty enough that she knows he’s been at it a while, ‘are you doing upside-down push-ups for?’

‘Part of my routine,’ he tells her. ‘Helps my balance.’

She’s dubious, at best.

‘Have you had breakfast yet?’ she asks, and Clint nods, but she knows for a fact she’ll go into the kitchen and there’ll be no sign of him being in there other than the coffee pot. She’s known him long enough now to know that he thinks coffee is an acceptable breakfast, and as much as she despairs, she can’t really stop him.

‘How long have you been at this?’ she asks next, because maybe it’s not too late.

‘What time is it?’ he asks, and shakes himself out, getting to his feet and stretching.

‘Half-past nine,’ she tells him.

‘Since seven?’ he asks, ‘maybe? I don’t know, I was having trouble sleeping.’

She gives him a flat look and grabs his arm when he goes to turn and head, she’s sure, to the weights stacked in the corner.

‘Nope,’ she tells him, wrapping both of her arms around one of his, digging her heels in. ‘Nope, you’re taking a break. You can’t go on empty, Clint, for God’s sake.’

‘I’m not on empty,’ he tells her, and she snorts, starts dragging him into the kitchen.

‘A cup of coffee does not count. I’m going to call Phil and tell him you’re not allowed out on your own any more, you can’t be trusted. Honestly, if we didn’t keep an eye on you, you’d just sleep and work out and never eat.’

‘I do eat,’ he tells her with a frown.

‘I know you do,’ she says, ruffling his hair, and then wiping the sweat off on a dry spot on his T-shirt. It is, admittedly, hard to find one. ‘You just don’t eat the right amount of the right things, honey. It’s alright when you’re young, but one day you’re going to wake up and feel awful because the only thing in your system will be pizza cheese and bacon grease.’

‘Hey now,’ he starts, but doesn’t protest further, because she knows that he knows that his diet is literal garbage.

After following her through to the kitchenette, he says, ‘my stomach’s cramping, I don’t want to eat anything.’

Bent double to look in the fridge (and to distract him, because she knows what her ass looks like in these shorts at this angle), she hums. ‘I’m sure I can think of something.’

They’ve got half a tub of strawberries left, and there’s half a tub of mixed fruit. She eyes them, and then shrugs, straightens, scooping up the bottle of milk with two fingers and elbowing the fridge shut.

‘Fruit?’ he asks.

‘You do eat fruit,’ she tells him, ‘I’m pretty sure I saw you eat an apple two weeks ago.’

He gives her a _look_ , but it goes ignored, and she throws it all in the blender before pouring the resulting smoothie into mugs. They don’t have glasses. Clint isn’t good with glasses, she’s found.

‘I was thinking,’ she says some minutes later as she finishes sipping at her drink. ‘Maybe, if you wanted, I could keep you company? Exercise with you, I mean. If you wanted.’

He considers it for a few moments. ‘That’d be nice,’ he says, ‘I’d like that. But I don’t think you’d be able to keep up too long. I don’t go easy now.’

‘I’ll catch up,’ she promises.

She doesn’t, of course she doesn’t. But she tries for a week, to at least keep going for the same length of time, even if she’s not doing as much. She tries hard, and he kisses her for every sit up, and doesn’t tease about her inability to do the weights (just you wait, she’d tease, just you wait, we’ll have kids one day, and I’ll be stronger than you then) too much. He’s good about the whole thing, even when he turns around one morning and tells her that she’s being ridiculous trying to keep up, slow down, do something else.

She does dance workouts instead. He hates the leotards, so she buys one in every colour. They don’t get much exercising done in the apartment after that.

* * *

_2014_

J.A.R.V.I.S. cannot _like_ people. He’s a program, and no matter how well he _is_ programmed, he cannot like people on a personal level, because he is not a person.

But he likes Clint Barton all the same. He’s a good man, not without his faults, but he’s a good man. Miss Natasha likes him a lot, would – and he’s sure has, and will again – kill a man for him. Mr Stark likes him too, in that way Mr Stark likes people.

Still, Mr Barton has a secret, and J.A.R.V.I.S. is not sure whether he should poke and prod and discover it. He’s a trustworthy man, he knows, else Mr Stark would never have let him into the tower in the first place, and Miss Natasha, when he asks, quietly one evening as she bathes, far away from the boys and their loud, vitriolic video games, assures him that Mr Barton is a good man, one of the best.

‘You’ve not got anything to worry about with him, J.A.R.V.I.S.,’ she assures him.

He is convinced for a short while. But a short while does not last forever when Mr Barton is not nearly as subtle as he thinks he is.

It doesn’t take long for J.A.R.V.I.S. to realise that this closely guarded secret that has Mr Barton guarding his phone with bared teeth and white knuckles is a _girlfriend_. After years of Mr Stark not having anyone – and really, he is almost impressed that Miss Potts has stuck around as long as she has, but he cannot imagine anyone else filling the space quite the way she does – he is amused by the secrecy and the harried phonecalls and the hidden messages. It’s sweet, but he wonders, after accidentally overhearing a rather emotional conversation between Mr Barton and his paramour, whether he should inform Mr Stark. Clearly, Mr Barton is keeping his lady love a secret, and Mr Stark does not like secrets.

The Captain dislikes them even more so, and there have already been arguments about secrets in the short months they’ve lived together at the tower.

In the end, J.A.R.V.I.S. decides that he will keep a spare subroutine or two focused on Mr Barton’s phone, just to make sure that this secret he’s keeping will not hurt the other Avengers. He has Miss Natasha’s assurances that he is a good man, but that does not account for the people he associates with without public acknowledgement. Mr Barton often addresses his paramour as “ma’am,” and J.A.R.V.I.S. is not sure how to feel – if he could feel, of course – about Mr Barton responding to a higher authority than Nick Fury, for he once says that she is a higher authority than Nick.

It takes him a week to decide that he is a hopelessly in love fool who adores the woman he speaks to – Laura, her name is Laura, and there are over eight-hundred-thousand people in the United States alone called Laura. Without a surname, there is no way of further investigating. He tries to search the phone number, but it comes back as belonging to Mr Barton, and for a few hours, as he runs a system diagnostic for Mr Stark, he considers searching satellite data for a location, to try and find her that way.

Then he decides that she does not seem all that bad, and decides to leave it alone. Mr Barton is happier for talking to her, and he never really talks about “work” beyond a mention or three of what a jerk Mr Stark is. Mr Barton is very self-conscious, J.A.R.V.I.S. has learnt, very doubtful of his abilities, about his place. He wonders, idle, finding a virus trying to creep in through one of the Captain’s downloaded art programs and disposing of it, how to make Mr Barton feel more appreciated.

He does not have to ponder long

One day, a package arrives for Mr Barton, and J.A.R.V.I.S. scans through it, as he does all parcels and packages. He is sure Mr Barton has never received a parcel before. This may be, J.A.R.V.I.S. will admit, because he kept the few addressed to him back from being collected for their negative and often foul content; Mr Barton is not a fragile man, but there is no point in allowing him to unwrap abuse. But this parcel is intriguing. There are no electronics, and no viruses, no poisons in the boxed cupcakes and cookies, nothing untoward. There are pictures. J.A.R.V.I.S. scans them for anything that could be construed as being – how had Mr Stark put it? – “not good.”

One of the pictures reads TO DAD, WE LOVE YOU. Some of the letters are backwards.

J.A.R.V.I.S. stops scanning the parcel and puts it through to be collected.

 Mr Barton is very surprised to receive a package in that day’s mail, and J.A.R.V.I.S. watches his face a little too closely as he leaves the kitchen to collect it when Mr Odinson calls to inform him of his gift. He’s very confused, is Mr Barton, as he takes the package, which is heavier than it looks to be, and drops onto the couch, puts it in his lap. Miss Natasha leans over his shoulder to look at the address and she gets that smirk. She must know, J.A.R.V.I.S. reasons, but Miss Natasha keeps so many secrets he hadn’t even thought to look for Mr Barton’s in her. He doesn’t open the box, just stares at it, traces the address and the two-dozen more stamps than necessary with his fingertips. J.A.R.V.I.S. knows that there’s no return address.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ the Captain asks.

Mr Barton’s head jerks up, and he looks guilty for a second. There had been a smile on his face, J.A.R.V.I.S. knows.

‘No,’ he says, ‘no, this is a kid’s writing; I don’t know what they’ve sent me. What if it’s food? I’ll never even get _one_ cookie if I open it around you lot.’

He says it just to get the attention off him, J.A.R.V.I.S. knows, because Miss Natasha is the first to start goading the boys into a squabble about who would eat the most cookies. While they’re distracted, Mr Barton disappears into his room to open his parcel in peace. After making sure his door is locked, he sits on his bed and covers his mouth for a moment. J.A.R.V.I.S. learns a lot about Mr Barton in those seconds spent composing himself before he works on unwrapping the box. There are five layers of paper before he gets to the box, taped to impossibility, and he laughs, reaches for one of the razor-sharp arrows just lying around (and J.A.R.V.I.S. decides he will never understand this man) and uses it to pick apart the tape enough to get it open.

‘Babies,’ Mr Barton sighs to himself as he hacks away, ‘you really outdid yourselves. I hope you left your momma some spare.’

J.A.R.V.I.S. wonders if this mystery “momma” is the same woman he’s been calling. Mr Barton seems the monogamous, loyal sort, and he reasons they’re probably one and the same woman. From what Mr Barton has said to her, Laura seems the sort that would make a good mother.

Inside the box, as J.A.R.V.I.S. is already aware, is a tub of homemade raisin cookies, and six purple velvet cupcakes with printed birds stuck to the top. Mr Barton smiles a very gentle sort of smile, the kind that gives him dimples and creases his eyes in the way that J.A.R.V.I.S. has read is a very attractive trait in a man and would earn him monikers that J.A.R.V.I.S. is sure aren’t too far from being true, because while he is not one of the variety of people with physical bodies and physical needs that seem to always be around the Tower these days, Mr Barton is, it seems, a Dad. And the internet has had more than a few things to say about the way he smiles and ruffles his hair and doesn’t so much laugh as he does giggle. The internet has plenty to say about that. Then he shoves one of the cookies in his mouth whole and shatters any illusion of being anything other than Clint Barton.

Shoving the boxes of treats into the cubby hole next to his bed, he turns next to the gifts in the box, which includes feathers and capsule toys, amongst other small things. But what gets Mr Barton’s attention the most are drawings made by children J.A.R.V.I.S. would place money on being under ten, pictures of a family that Mr Barton is evidently keeping secret. There’s Mr Barton himself, identified, admittedly, primarily by the bow in his hand, and the purple T-shirt the children have given him. Next to him, holding his hand, is a lady in red with dark hair, a big smile on her face. On Mr Barton’s other side is a poorly drawn yellow dog – a retriever of some kind seems the most likely, given its size and colour – and on the other side of the dog is a boy in blue, with the same dark hair as the lady in red and a smile. On the other side, holding the woman’s free hand, is a little girl in a pink and blue dress, her hair – in the same light brown as Mr Barton’s – in two plaits over her shoulders. They’re stood on grass and there is a sun in the sky. The message reads TO DAD, WE LOVE YOU. (LOTS is added in a different colour and handwriting.) LOVE, YOUR HAWKS.

Mr Barton laughs when he looks at it.

‘You should have let your momma put that on the wall,’ he tells the hawk-children, and what a novel nickname that is, J.A.R.V.I.S. thinks. He doubts Mr Barton started it, but he seems to enjoy having something to call so irrevocably his.

There are several more pictures; there’s a picture of Mr Barton and what is apparently the family dog, and a crooked picture of a green and white house. There’s also a couple of letters, and they take Mr Barton several minutes to get through, not because of their length or childish hand, but because he is so visibly touched by this care package from his children that he has to pinch at the inner corners of his eyes and swallow thickly more than once. J.A.R.V.I.S. does not think, should the occasion arise, that his girlfriend will mind receiving the footage he may or may not be recording of this moment.

There is, at the bottom of the box, a photograph, creased at the corners. Two children, with dark eyes but his smile, his nose, beam at the camera. The girl is making a heart against her chest with her hands. The boy is mid-gesture, fists crossed against his chest. J.A.R.V.I.S. reasons this is the ASL gesture for love, because if these are Mr Barton’s children, it would be logical that they know ASL, given that Mr Barton is more likely to converse with Miss Natasha using it than he is spoken word.

It drives Mr Stark insane.

Mr Barton rubs his face, swallows and sighs.

‘I love you,’ he says, brushes his fingers over the photo.

He stays staring at the photo for long enough that J.A.R.V.I.S. almost asks if he’s alright. But then he’s moving the box to the bed to get up and fish his phone out. He dials Laura’s number, and before pressing call, he listens carefully. But the other Avengers are still bickering over their own mail, and aren’t interested in what Mr Barton is up to. So he presses call and holds the phone to his ear.

J.A.R.V.I.S. does not feel bad for listening in. Not in the least.

‘So I got a present from the hawkbabies this morning,’ Mr Barton says on Laura picking up.

‘Oh? Was it nice?’

Mr Barton laughs, and lays back on his bed, holds the photograph in his free hand. ‘Don’t pretend like you weren’t involved, they can’t bake cookies worth a damn. They didn’t get your cooking skills.’

 ‘Coop did,’ Laura says, ‘sort of. He didn’t leave half the eggshell in this time, that’s an improvement.’

Mr Barton is forced to agree. J.A.R.V.I.S. knows that Mr Barton is a decent cook, when left to work without distraction, favouring wholesome, family-friendly food, all mild tastes and staples, pastas and breads and salads, with all the flavour coming from fruit-heavy desserts. Now that J.A.R.V.I.S. has more insight into Mr Barton’s private life, he understands why he cooks the way he does.

They walk a while longer, talk of their children. Mr Barton promises to try and make it home soon. J.A.R.V.I.S. knows he will have a hard time convincing the Captain to let him go, and decides that he will do his best to convince Mr Stark to help convince the Captain to let him go. He’s overworked, he’ll make Mr Stark argue. He’s overworked and he’s tired, and they all deserve a break. HYDRA will still be there next week, let them _rest._ Mr Stark is good at arguing his point. He’ll call it debating. It’s arguing.

Mr Barton lies there for a while after he’s hung up on Laura, staring at the photograph in his hand.


	13. Firsts and Middles

_1994_

It feels perfect, waking up to the sleep-warm, skin-soft weight of Clint pressed against her back. He’s got a leg thrown over hers, his arm tucked tight about her ribs, holding her to him like she’s a body pillow made to fit especially in the space of his body. It’s nice, comforting. Comfortable, too, in a way she’d never been comfortable before. It was too close, but not close enough, too hot but _just_ right.

For a few moments, she lies there watching the last of the raindrops glitter in the morning sunlight against the window, revelling in the quiet. Clint’s breath huffs hot and morning-sour against her neck, prickling against the skin, and Lucky kicks a foot in his dream before rolling over and curling into a heap in the space that Clint should have been occupying. She feels like she could stay here forever in this moment, just lying here with her – her – he’s her boyfriend, she feels like she can say that and he can’t get offended by it, because she’s fairly certain, short of the universe itself stepping in, that there’s no one else.

Her arm moves, hand finding his, and she doesn’t need to look to find the veins webbing under his skin, to trace her fingers feather-light over them. She’s staring, eyes half-open, at the window, watching the raindrops become a hundred miniature sun-catchers, diamonds on the glass.

Clint sniffles, and his hand fidgets against her ribs, his fingers itching as he tries to shake off the sensation of hers. It tickles, _his_ touch feather-light, and she squirms, bites back her laughter.

‘Stop that,’ she whispers, and giggles more when his hand presses flat, drags her close, as though there was any closer for her to get.

His leg, thrown over hers, tightens, tangles itself in with hers, and she can’t stop giggling. She tries her hardest – he’s still asleep, and she doesn’t want to wake him, because it’s not fair when he gets so little sleep as it is. Maybe she can catch another couple of hours while she’s at it. She doesn’t have to worry about work today, and it’s not as if they had any pressing matters to attend to.

‘Oh,’ she whispers.

Speaking of pressing matters.

‘Clint?’ she whispers, but he just continues to breathe, completely asleep, a dead weight against her back.

Well, mostly dead.

‘Clint?’ she whispers again. ‘Clint, you’ve got a boner.’

She waits, but there’s still no reaction coming – ha! – except for his steady breathing continuing on uninterrupted. It’s nice, sure, but she can think of things that would be nicer.

She tickles his hand again, and when he tickles her belly in reaction, she laces her fingers through his, squeezes gentle.

‘Clint,’ she tries. Third time’s a charm. ‘Wake up, dummy.’

He does wake up, enough to know what he’s got going on downstairs, anyway, and she doesn’t know whether she should laugh about the fact that his reaction is to try and pull away from her, only to overestimate how hard he’s pulling away, and he tumbles out of bed, hitting the floor with a bang that makes her bolt upright.

‘Are you alright?’ she asks, rolling over to lean over the bed. She’s between his feet, since they were left on the bed when he tumbled, and she considers tweaking his bare toes.

His feet are gross, but she’s seen worse. And his feet are not her priority right now.

‘I’m okay,’ he assures her, his hands between his legs, as if it could disguise anything.

She laughs then, proper, full laughter, and she shifts her weight, balances herself, and reaches down, touches his forearms.

‘You’re so cute,’ she tells him, ‘you are actually the cutest, you know that? Give me your hands, come on, back up here so I can kiss you.’

He fidgets, and doesn’t give her his hands.

‘Clint,’ she says, ‘come on, gimme your hands.’

He frowns, and shakes his head.

‘I’ll just pull you down here,’ he says, ‘I’m twice the size of you.’

‘It’s alright,’ she says, and carefully stretches out to put her hands either side of his head and lean down to peck his nose. ‘I’ll just land on you, you’re nice and soft. Well. Most of you is.’

He goes scarlet, and she grins, kisses his mouth before finding his ankle with one hand and using his legs to lever herself back up. It doesn’t do her back any favours, she’s sure, but she gives his ankles a rub while she’s there, and she smiles, gentle now.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘did you want to – should I turn my back?’

For a second, he looks like he might say yes. But then he’s shaking his head, and mumbling, ‘naw, it’s okay,’ before moving one hand to elbow himself into a sitting position.

His ankles slip out from under her hands, and she shuffles back, gives him space to get back up onto the bed at his own pace. It doesn’t take him long to get back into bed, and she notices that he gets under the covers again, so she does too, just to even the field a bit. Lying side-by-side again, Lucky still sleeping on at their feet, she watches the sunlight flicker like diamonds on his eyes. He has freckles. She’s never noticed before, and she wants to dot them in with a fingertip, a kiss.

‘You wanna, um. You should do something about that,’ she says, and fights the urge to offer her help. ‘Before you get too, um. Cold.’

‘I won’t get cold,’ he promises, and she watches the twist of his mouth.

‘If you’re sure.’

They lapse back into silence, and after barely a minute, Laura’s wriggling closer until they’re almost nose-to-nose and her calf’s loose over his.

‘It’s totally natural,’ Laura offers, and Clint makes an aborted noise. ‘I don’t mind at all.’

Clint’s eyes are wide and bluer than normal when he shoots her a panicked look.

‘I know that,’ he bites, looks everywhere not her. ‘I’m twenty-three, I’ve had morning wood before, you know. I just – I’m – ‘

‘I’m not bothered,’ she assures him, reaches out to touch his hair, awry with sleep. She can count his eyelashes, just about, the freckles on his nose. ‘This is better, don’t you think? Bed’s too big for just us.’

It’s hardly too big, but he nods anyway, smiles.

‘Yeah,’ he says, gravelly and low, and she touches his ear. He’s got CIC aids at the moment. She almost misses his BTEs. ‘Much better.’

Her fingers trail down his arm and he shudders, the fine hairs there standing on end.

‘Are you cold?’ she asks, and smoothes her hand over his arm.

‘Hot,’ he replies.

‘You are very hot,’ she agrees, and his blush returns in full force.

‘Stop that,’ he mumbles, turning his face into his pillow.

Laura inches closer, and draws a breath; he feels very, _very_ different against her like this than against her back. He swallows, and his eye catches the light as he watches her.

‘Say no,’ she says, ‘say no, and I’ll back off.’

He opens his mouth, and for a second, she’s terrified he’s going to say no.

‘Don’t,’ he whispers. ‘Don’t back off.’

‘Okay,’ she replies, and her nose bumps his before she tilts her head, brushes their mouths together.

One kiss becomes two, three, a dozen, too many to count, and then she’s not even trying.

* * *

  _2014_

It’s a lazy Sunday; Steve and Nat are off doing whatever it is they’re doing, some investigation (and likely, subsequent destruction) of a suspected HYDRA base, leaving Clint, Tony and Bruce with little to do. Bruce has sequestered himself away with a dozen experiments that have to be watched at all times, because they found some interesting toxins during their last raid, and he’s been hard at work trying to make antidotes and vaccines, which is slow going, because he’s not that kind of doctor, not really. Tony’s been playing around with the idea of making eye-pieces for all not-armoured Avengers, something to help them translate foreign languages on signs when they look at them, rather than have to run it through the radios and have J.A.R.V.I.S. translate it for them.

Clint’s on the other couch, reading _The Great Gatsby_. He’s been reading it for the last three hours that Tony’s been sat there, and he’s moved about twenty pages. Tony’s sure he reads faster than that in his sleep.

‘Is it that boring?’ he asks, and then, ‘why are you reading that, anyway? That’s one of those books you only read in school and then forget once you’ve sat the exam.’

Clint’s ears go red. It’s hard to see beneath the BTEs, but they do.

‘It’s good,’ he says, grudgingly. He slowly turns another page. ‘Just. Slow going, is all.’

Tony hums, and scrolls through his coding. ‘I remember reading it in an afternoon, I think,’ he says, ‘’course, that was a long time ago.’

‘Calling yourself old?’ Clint whips back, and Tony glances at him over his knees.

‘You’re six months younger than me,’ Tony reminds him.

‘Don’t I know it,’ Clint grumbles, and goes back to his book.

After a few minutes of silence have passed, Tony says, ‘no but seriously, why’s it taking you so long?’

‘Because you keep talking to me,’ Clint says, and Tony watches him mark his place on the page with a post-it note before snapping it shut.

‘I started talking to you three minutes ago, don’t take that tone with me.’

‘Tony,’ Clint warns, and Tony squints at him.

Clint doesn’t look at him for a few long moments, staring at the cover of the book before tossing it on the coffee table and laying back to stare at the ceiling.

‘You read my file,’ he says eventually.

‘Of course I did,’ Tony says, ‘I was the only one that did any homework.’

‘Then you know damn well why it’s taking me so long to read it, don’t play dumb. It doesn’t suit you.’

Clint’s foot is bouncing, and Tony counts out the rhythm, tries to match it to whatever song Clint had been listening to most recently. It changes, depending on his mood. He’s getting – not homesick, because as far as Tony can tell, Clint doesn’t _have_ a home, but he’s getting antsy. He doesn’t like being here, and Tony gets that. He wants to be elsewhere. Where elsewhere is, Tony doesn’t have a clue, but he wants to tell Steve to let him go there.

‘I know why,’ he says, quiet. ‘You want J.A.R.V.I.S. to get an audiobook for you?’

‘I can get my own audiobook,’ Clint grunts, and rolls over to face the back of the couch, like he can’t just get up and leave the room.

‘Then why struggle through boring as shit words on paper when you can have – have – J.A.R.V.I.S. who’s done an audiobook for _The Great Gatsby_?’

‘There is currently an edition on Audible as read by Jake Gyllenhaal, sir.’

‘There, see?’ Tony says, ‘you can have him read you an _American Classic_ – Jake Gyllenhaal, are you sure?’

J.A.R.V.I.S. assures him that that is what the listing says.

Tony purses his lips, but goes with it.

‘Either way,’ he says, ‘audiobooks. They’re a godsend. No point crucifying yourself for the sake of literature.’

Clint doesn’t reply for several minutes, and Tony watches the back of his head for a few moments before going back to his coding.

‘I want to read it,’ Clint says, grumbling it into the crease of his arm. ‘I’ve never – I’ve never finished a book before. I want to finish it.’

‘It’s a good goal,’ Tony agrees, because there’s no point in denying a truth. ‘But there are better books to read. Read something great. Read my biography.’

‘I’ve already got the audiobook,’ Clint says, so dry and so without inflection that Tony is stunned into silence for half a second before bursting out laughing.

‘Clint,’ Tony says, when he’s stopped laughing. ‘It’s not like it’s something to be ashamed of, you know.’

‘Says the certified genius.’

‘There are plenty of dyslexic people. Da Vinci, Picasso, Whoopi Goldberg, Steve Jobs, they’re all dyslexic.’

‘You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you?’ Clint says, and sits up to give his teammate – his _friend_ , though God knows what Tony did to earn such a title – a dirty look. ‘I don’t need a lecture, Tony, I’m forty-three, I can handle it.’

Tony looks at him like he thinks he’s full of shit. He tells him as such.

‘I think you’re full of shit,’ he says.

‘Right back at you.’

Tony wrinkles his nose, and throws a couch cushion at him. Clint catches it, and tosses it back, landing it right back where it started.

‘I hate it when you do that,’ Tony says, and as Clint gets up to leave the room, picking up his book – presumably, to read in peace and quiet away from Tony’s attempts at being positive – he asks, ‘why _are_ you making yourself read it, anyway? You never answered me.’

‘Get that coding done, Tony,’ Clint tosses over his shoulder, ‘Steve’ll want it by the time he’s back.’

‘Barton!’

But Clint’s shut the door behind him and retreated.

‘Download the shittiest quality audiobook you can find, J.A.R.V.I.S.,’ Tony says, and scrolls back to the end of his coding. ‘Play it at full volume when he’s asleep.’

J.A.R.V.I.S. opts to not reply.

* * *

_1994_

Clint is jittery, which isn’t like him at all; his hands are steady, but the rest of him isn’t, and as they head towards Clint’s favourite diner, he almost turns back twice.

‘What is your problem?’ Phil asks.

'Nothing. I don’t have a problem at all.’

Phil doesn’t believe him. He says that.

He says, 'I don’t believe you.’

Clint ignores him and continues on his way.

‘So.’

‘Shut up.’

Phil shuts up.

The diner is modestly busy, where the chatter doesn’t overwhelm the music but you can’t make out each individual word. Clint scouts the room for half a second before heading off down the right side. Phil follows, and is taken aback when Clint abruptly leans over the table to kiss a girl who’d been sat alone with Lucky at her side.

'Are you allowed to bring him in?’ Phil asks, and Clint slides into the booth next to her, his arm fitting easy around her shoulders.

'Service dog,’ he replies, 'c'mon, Phil, sit down. Staring’s rude.’

Phil sits down, and continues to stare. The girl smiles.

'Phil, right? I’m Laura.’

'Laura.’

'That’s right. Clint says you work together?’

'Yes, we’re -uh - we’re. I’m sorry. Clint never mentioned a girlfriend.’

A server approaches to ask about drinks. Clint asks for a smoothie. Phil asks for coffee, and frowns, baffled, at his agent.

'Smoothie?’

Laura has one half drunk on the table. It’s purple.

If course it’s purple.

'I liked berries before I met him, don’t worry,’ Laura says. 'The purple is a coincidence.’

'And what about that orange, eh?’ Clint teases, plucking at the thin strap of her top. 'Orange and red?’

'Oh shush. If someone hadn’t spilled soda on my black one last night, I’d have worn that one.’ She glances at Phil and her smile is so warm it burns. 'Then again, that one has birds on it. Eagles, I think. Between you and me, I think Clint’s jealous.’

Clint scoffs, and lets go of her to fuss the dog, who’s put his head in Clint’s lap.

'We’re still quite new,’ Laura says then, apologetic, as though it’s her fault. 'We’ve only been together for about a month?’

Phil knows Clint was on a mission in Nicaragua last week, and it had been a week long mission.

'I see,’ he says. 'Enjoying it?’

Enjoying it? What? Phil, you’re a mess.

'I am, weirdly. I get unlimited access to the best dog in the universe.’

Lucky’s tail hits the table leg, and Phil laughs.

Clint catches his eye, and smiles. The server returns with their drinks, and Phil thanks her. She asks for their food orders. Clint orders bacon, Laura orders an omelette and Phil glances at the board before ordering pancakes. The server is gone again, and Laura hums.

'So when did you get Lucky registered as a service dog? I didn’t see the paperwork.’

'We went through the civvie route,’ Clint says. 'So it only would have been going through front desk.’

Phil frowns. 'Shouldn’t you have gone through the PR department?’

Clint shrugs.

'It was her idea.’

Laura doesn’t look particularly affronted. 'I figured, well you know, Clint pays out the nose to bring Lucky in. And I don’t know the details of what you guys do? But I know Clint needs the dog. As far as I’m concerned, Lucky’s a service dog.’

'He’s better for having one,’ Phil agrees.

'He’s right here,’ Clint scoffs. 'If it’s all the same to you.’

Both Phil and Laura smile at him. Clint only smiles back at Laura.

As they wait for and then eat their food, Laura tells jokes that make Clint laugh, and tells Phil stories about their month together. Clint is as much of a disaster as ever, and Phil finds himself fond of her, fond of the way she touches Clint’s arm when she embarrasses him, fond of the way Clint looks at her. He looks at her with eyes like clear midnight skies, shining bright with the wonder of the universe, like he can’t believe divinity has chosen his table to take a seat at.

Phil thinks that must be nice, being so in love with someone.

It hurts, a little, knowing how much, after a month, Clint has fallen for her, how attached he’s gotten, because he’s going to have to tell Fury. He’s going to have to tell Fury, and Fury will tell him to send Laura packing. They need Clint free of distractions, free of conflictions. For only a Level 7 agent, they’re putting some heavy pressure on him, asking things of him that Phil knows rarely get assigned to Level 8 agents. Christ.

Laura laughs in the middle of a joke and wipes sauce from the corner of Clint’s mouth with her thumb, popping it in her mouth like it’s the most natural gesture in the universe. Clint mottles pink across his cheeks, and Phil figures Fury doesn’t need to know about this just yet.

* * *

_2014_

Clint is dozing off in the bath when his phone rings, and he blinks at it before finding the will to answer it.

‘Barton.’

‘You sound sleepy,’ Laura laughs, and Clint hums, pushes a little more upright.

‘You sound stressed. The babies alright?’

Laura makes a grumpy noise, and he hears the slosh of water on her end of the phone. When he chuckles, she asks what he’s laughing about.

‘We’re both in the bath,’ he says, and wriggles his toes.

‘Hard day?’

‘Not really, just didn’t feel like standing up was all. What did the babies do to reduce you to a bath at – three in the morning? Normally by now you’re snoring your head off.’

‘I do not snore as much as you, take that back. They wouldn’t settle, was all. Demanded lullabies, but then wouldn’t listen to them.’

Clint frowns. ‘That’s not like them. A couple of songs, and _they’re_ snoring like little tractors.’

‘I don’t know,’ Laura says, and Clint imagines her in the bath, her feet up either side of the taps, hair piled high, bath pillow at her neck. She’s not a fan of bubbles the way he is, prefers the scented whatevers that make the water all silky and nice smelling. He sighs, misses her like he imagines he’d miss a limb. ‘I figure they wanted their dad to sing them lullabies.’

He sighs again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘I’m trying to get home, but – well.’

‘I understand,’ she assures him, and he feels the phantom caress of her fingers down his cheek like she’s actually there. ‘And I’m sure they do, too. But they miss you.’

‘I miss them, too,’ he sighs, ‘I want to come home so bad.’

‘Then do,’ she whispers. ‘Come home. Just get up and go, come now.’

Clint opens his mouth, and Laura sighs.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘it’s not fair to do that _every_ time. I just – I want you home.’

‘I want to be home. But I gotta be their dad too. They’re worse than my babies, because at least mine don’t throw themselves on grenades.’

‘That bad, huh?’ Laura laughs, and Clint rubs at the inner corner of an eye, sinks lower into the bath so his knees are sticking out of the bubbles, and he wriggles his toes.

‘Terrible,’ he grumbles, and knocks his knees together, watching the slosh of the water against the lip of the tub. ‘You’d think they’d know better by now, but they’re all so self-sacrificing and heroic and trying to be noble, and you can stop laughing right now, thank you very much. I never said I wasn’t a hypocrite.’

Laura doesn’t stop laughing, and it takes her a few minutes to stop giggling every time she gets her breath back. Clint waits her out, picks at a scab on one knee as he does so, and his heart does the flip-flop thing it had been doing for the past twenty years whenever her laughter starts up again.

‘I love you,’ he says.

‘I love you, too,’ she replies. ‘Listen, I don’t suppose – if you get time, between doing your Avenging and I mean – there’s still press, right? Nat said something about interviews with some news station, I forget which one. I don’t suppose – no, no, it’s stupid, don’t worry about it.’

Clint grunts. ‘Just tell me, don’t play coy. It’s too late for that.’

‘You never mind me being coy this late if I’m in that bra you like.’

‘I don’t mind nothing if you’re in that bra I like,’ Clint scoffs. ‘Tell me what you want, honey, I’ll do my best, you know that.’

‘I was just thinking – the kids miss you, and you call them a lot, I know, I get that you talk to them as much as you can. And they see you on the TV and stuff, so they hear your voice a lot still. But they don’t – I really think they wanted you to sing them lullabies tonight, I think that’s what the problem was.’

‘Right,’ Clint says, and squints at his now-bleeding knee. He dunks it back under the water, and props his foot next to the taps. ‘You want me to call them more at bedtime?’

‘If you’re the other side of the world fighting terrorists and supervillains and aliens and all that, you can’t keep promises like that. No, no, what if you – what if you made a tape? Like a mixtape for them. But it’s just your lullabies. So I can play it for them when they want you to sing but you’re not there.’

Clint thinks about it for half a second. ‘I can do that,’ he says, as soon as she’s finished speaking. ‘That’s not a problem, I can do that pretty easily, actually, I just need to get a guitar, but that’s hardly going to be a problem. There’s a music store like two streets down from us.’

Laura’s smile curls across her words, and he wishes that smile was curled against his mouth. ‘That’s good,’ she says, ‘thank you, honey. Seriously. I – call them soon, okay?’

‘Tomorrow,’ he promises, ‘first thing. We don’t have any raids planned. No new bases. Short of another alien invasion, nothing’s gonna take me away from them.’

She breathes deep. ‘Holding you to it. Now about you being in the bath. Would I be right in assuming you’re naked?’

He laughs, low in his chest, and assures her that that is the case, would she like a photo? She would, of course, like a photo. He’s happy to oblige.

(She’s not so happy at a photo of bath bubbles.)

* * *

  _2015_

 Lila’s bedside light is still on when Clint gets to the top of the stairs, and he smiles for a second before pushing the door open a few inches more, enough to poke his head in and check on her. She’s fast asleep, sprawled out on her front, blankets half-kicked off, hair everywhere, and he bites back a laugh, keeps it in his heart where it belongs, and slips in to straighten her out and tuck her in. She stirs when he rearranges her legs, gets them tucked back under the blanket.

‘Dad?’ she breathes.

‘Hey, sweetheart,’ he whispers back, and carefully kneels next to her bed to stroke some hair from her face.

She’s got her momma’s eyes, and they blink slow, can’t open the whole way as she peers at him.

‘Go back to sleep, sweetheart,’ he says, and she nods, eyes shutting.

After a moment, she curls up towards him, clutching her bear close to her chest. He finishes brushing her hair back, and draws the blankets up to her armpits, the way he always does. She doesn’t like having them up to her neck, feels constricted and can never settle.

‘I love you,’ he whispers, leans over to kiss her temple. She smells of shampoo and pencils and he memorises it for the thousandth time.

She hums, wriggles a bit, but her breathing is slow and even, already asleep. A last brush of his hand over her hair, and his throat starts to itch, so he gets up to go to Coop’s room.

His son’s half-asleep, book loose in his fingers, but still trying to read. When his door pushes open, he turns his head.

‘Dad,’ he says, smiles.

‘Hey, buddy. You alright?’

 ‘Yeah, just finishing this chapter.’

Clint nods, and crosses the room to perch on the edge of the bed. Coop abandons the book in favour of his dad, settles to blink at him.

‘You goin’ soon?’ he whispers, and Clint nods, fiddles with the blanket.

‘Soon as the team are ready, we’ll be leaving.’

‘Can’t you wait?’

Clint smiles, throat itching some more. ‘No,’ he says, shakes his head, ‘we already – we don’t have much time left. Bad guys, you know? Don’t have any decency.’

‘I hope you stop them,’ Coop mumbles, and his hands raise, stretch up towards him. Clint goes, digs his fingers under Coop’s arms to pull him up into him, hugs him tight.

Coop’s getting big, and he rarely hugs his dad now, but Clint supposes Coop knows. Lila understands that Clint’s work takes him all over the world for long periods of time, but Coop understands that sometimes, bad guys might not let him come home.

‘We will,’ Clint promises. ‘We’ll stop them.’

‘You gotta come home,’ Coop mumbles then, pressing the words into the collar of his shirt.

He needs to change, get back into uniform. Can’t fight killer robots in chinos and a check shirt. Still, at least he’d be wearing clothes, he supposes. There was that one time the safe house got attacked, and he’d been in the shower. He’s had worse conditions to work with.

But that was then, and this is now, and Coop’s eyes are wet, his throat tight. Clint takes a deep breath, holds it, presses soft kisses to his son’s crown.

‘I love you,’ Clint tells him, ‘I love you so much.’

‘Don’t make it weird,’ Coop chokes back, and Clint laughs, hauls him closer.

Coop’s heavy now, a solid weight of a boy, and he’s getting strong, helping his momma out around the house, helping his dad with renovations. It’s nice, seeing him grow so much in the weeks he’s away, coming home to a son inches taller. Almost as tall as his momma now, and he’s only nine. Clint thinks, for a half-second’s consideration, of his brother, of Barney. Barney had been almost full-grown by sixteen, a hulking giant that Clint could never catch up to. He’d always been tall for his age as they grew up, so Clint had worn his clothes more than Barney himself did. But the thought of his brother, still MIA, no record of him anywhere, it makes him sad, so he stops considering it for the second half of that second, and his attention returns to Coop.

‘It’s always weird,’ Clint teases, and tweaks Coop’s ear. ‘Come on, buddy, time for you to go to sleep. I’ll be here until then, don’t you worry about that.’

‘Don’t wanna wake up with you gone,’ he mumbles, and Clint hesitates.

‘You tell your momma I said you could star-gaze in the morning, okay?’ he says, ‘you tell her it was my idea, she can tell me off when I get home.’

It’s a vaguer promise than a promise to beat the bad guys, but it means more to Cooper, Clint knows. Clint has never promised to take the blame without ever not taking it. If he says he’ll take the blame, he’ll be home and he’ll accept the pinch to his inner arm without hesitation.

(Laura won’t tell him off for letting their son stay up too late, because Clint will be staggering home, Wanda in tow. Coop’s late night will be the least of her concerns. Clint will still grin at his son like they’re sharing a secret.)

* * *

  _1986_

It’s dark, and raining heavily, and Barney is too focused on getting a fallen tent upright to hear someone approach. Clint has gotten good at sneaking up on him, all that performing taking his weight onto the balls of his feet, and he’s still weedy enough to be able to jump on his brother’s back without sending them both sprawling. But it’s not Clint that approaches. Clint’s up in the beams of the Big Top practicing hitting impossible-looking bulls-eyes, or with one of the seamstresses or dead in a ditch somewhere. It’s not like they see each other these days. For living side-by-side, Barney hasn’t seen Clint for days.

God forbid the little shit actually help him with what is technically still his job. Archery apprentice or not, Clint is still classed as a roustabout, and he’d do well to remember that once in a while. No, no, that’s not fair on his baby bro. He doesn’t hate him for – for what? For Barney struggling to right a fallen tent by himself in the middle of a storm? For Clint having the better aim? Barney had been hitting Dad’s cans long before Clint could tie a knot, but he’d always been handier with his fists. Taught Clint everything he could, just in case. Never wanted Clint to get into fights, of course. But he taught him anyway, because Dad had been handy with his fists too.

So yeah, it’s harsh. It’s harsh and unfair, and Barney should probably find him and make sure he’s alive. He’d sworn on Mom’s grave that he wouldn’t let anything happen to the kid. He’d sworn.

And Clint seems happier, the few times Barney’s seen him the last few weeks, happier to have something to put his mind to, a goal to achieve. It’s not something Barney can begrudge, because Clint isn’t going to have anything else if he doesn’t start thinking about his education. He’s not stupid, his little bro, he’s smart, and sharper than a tack. But he’s got no interest in it.

‘Charles Barton?’

He yanks a peg free and throws it. His aim, while not as good as his brother’s, is still accurate. Still sharp. He doesn’t aim between the eyes, but the peg hits straight into the suit’s belly. With the flat side, rather than the point, because Barney had done a lot of shit, but murder was not one of them, and he has no intentions of adding it to the list.

‘Good,’ the suit says, and doubles over to pick the fallen peg up. He’s as soaked as Barney is, and doesn’t seem to mind the muddy smear on his otherwise pristinely white shirt.

Extending the peg as a peace offering, he looks at the tent.

‘I believe you’ll need this.’

Barney looks at the peg, and then looks at the man attached to it. He’s in a smart, tailored suit, soaked through by the storm, and his hair is plastered to his brow, making his face boyish. He can’t be much older than Barney, who’s already full-grown, can’t be over twenty-five. But his eyes are old, sharp. He’s watching – _studying_ – he knows what he’s looking for. Part of Barney, the part that picks up crime novels on the cheap during long stays in a city, reads them in a day and trades them in for the next in the series, or the first of a new detective’s story, he wonders if the suit sees what he’s looking for. He’s shorter than Barney by a head, but he carries himself with a straight back and an easy smile. Too easy.

It’s a trap. Whoever this guy is, whatever circus he works for, it ain’t the travelling sideshow kind.

‘You a Fed?’ Barney asks, because it’s best to get these things out in the open.

‘No, Mr Barton – can I call you Charles? Is there a name you would prefer me to call you?’

Barney doesn’t answer. He suspects that the suit knows he goes by Barney.

‘Oh,’ the suit says, when the silence drags. Barney still hasn’t taken the peg, and the suit clearly doesn’t know what to do with it. ‘Right. Well. I’m Agent Phil Coulson, Mr Barton. I work for an agency called S.H.I.E.L.D., we work with – but not for – the government.’

‘Shield,’ Barney snorts. ‘Shield. What a fuckin’ name.’

‘ _Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division_ ,’ Coulson chirps, as though the mouthful is a point of personal pride.

‘Sounds stupid,’ Barney tells him, ‘now get outta my way, alright? I gotta get this tent up ‘fore Mary wants to go to bed.’

Coulson cocks his head to the side, and doesn’t seem to notice the rain hammering at his eardrum.

‘Mary? Is she your – I suppose not, no. No, no, Mary is – well.’

Barney offers him little more than a scathing sidelong look and begins hauling at the supports again. Finally deciding to shove the peg into the mud alongside another one, Coulson moves to help him. Having an extra pair of hands – stronger than they look – is helpful, and they manage to get the tent back upright, and a few swift kicks get it straightened up. Between them, they manage to get the canvas pinned back down in perfect order, and Barney pokes his head in to make sure nothing is broken. It all seems to have survived, and he seals it up before squelching off down the row to check on the other tents.

He’s heading to where he knows Clint tends to sleep these days – fifteen is _too young_ , he wants to scream, it’s too young, he shouldn’t be doing this shit, but how can he stop him? He’s not Dad, and he’s not got the respect Mom had, and he doesn’t want to drag her name through the mud by bringing her into this mess – hoping that Clint will be amiable to shutting Coulson out by letting his brother in and acting like it’s all a big game.

But there’s no luck to be had, because Clint isn’t anywhere to be found, and by the third row of tents, Coulson has reasonable cause to believe that Barney is deliberate trying to get him gone.

‘Mr Barton,’ he starts, and manages to catch up to Barney, grabbing his arm to stop him. ‘Stop, please.’

Barney wrenches his arm free. The rain is lashing, horizontal, and the sound of it hitting the waxed canvas is deafening. Clint, if he’s asleep, is probably sleeping like a baby.

‘Look,’ Barney says, fists clenched. ‘Look, I don’t wanna fight you, but I will, a’ight? Just _go_. I ain’t interested. Clint ain’t gonna be interested neither.’

They stand there in the middle of dark, empty tents under a dark, heaving sky, and stare at each other. Barney’s shivering with the chill of the rain, and Coulson looks like barely notices it.

‘I see,’ he says, and Barney’s nails bite, painful, into the fat of his hand. ‘I was hoping you might consider hearing me out. I came to offer you a job.’

‘I ain’t trading out this circus for yours,’ Barney assures him, spitting the words out. ‘I don’t want no part in it, and Clint ain’t old enough.’

Coulson sighs. ‘We could provide Clint with safe housing,’ he says, ‘schooling. We would, if he was amiable, enrol him in the Academy we have, to train our agents. We only accept the best of the best, you understand. But while we wouldn’t force him to make that decision, we certainly wouldn’t let him stay here until he’s old enough to choose.’

Barney misses school. He’d done his best to stay enrolled in schools throughout their travel, taking his exams where he could. He’d scored high, very high. His certificates are in the bottom of the travel crate in his tent, something he’s proud of, even if they’ll never get used.

‘Best of the best?’ he asks, and then shakes his head. ‘Get out of here ‘fore I holler for security. You wouldn’t like security. They’re bigger than me.’

Coulson looks as though Barney is being more trouble than he’d really wanted to deal with; had Coulson truly believed that he would agree to sign over not only himself, but his idiot kid brother? That he’d let them be spirited away in the night again? He didn’t need another freak show in his life.

‘Go,’ he repeats. ‘I won’t ask again.’

He wasn’t asking at all, but that was neither here nor there.

Coulson sighs. With the rain soaking him to the bone, he looks dog-tired and haggard in ways befitting one of those crime novels Barney loves, a film noir detective being left behind by a handsome dame. But Coulson is not a detective, he isn’t anything. He’s nothing, nobody. Barney will forget his name in a day, and by the time they’re out of the city, he’ll have forgotten that anybody came at all.

But –

But in twenty-five years, on a mid-summer’s day with the sun shining bright and sweat prickling at his hairline, Barney will look up from his desk to the monitor of his co-worker, who will be playing the news. He will see his baby brother, his idiot kid brother with his bow and his arrows, flinging himself off a rooftop and killing aliens. S.H.I.E.L.D. had found him, Barney will know, they’ll have found him again and they’ll have given him that same speech. Maybe it was Coulson that found him, spoke to him, convinced him to join them. Maybe they made the right choice, picked the right brother. Barney, as he watches the press conferences late into the evening, watching the way Clint shoves at Tony Stark’s shoulder and laughs long and loud and sits angled towards a pretty woman with red hair, he’ll think that perhaps Clint was always the better choice for world-saving.

For now, stood in that rainy field with Coulson offering up a business card with a name and a number and an emblem and nothing else, he thinks that he’ll forget about this, and that Clint will never need to worry about people watching him from the shadows. He doesn’t need that. He still has nightmares about Dad coming home drunk off his ass, he doesn’t need to worry about some shady not-government agency watching his every move.

When Coulson is gone, Barney tears the card into pieces and scatters them to the wind, picking his way through the mud back to his tent.

* * *

_2016_

Pepper comes back from a bathroom break to find Tony lying on the floor.

‘What do you want?’ she asks, and climbs over him. He protests that she didn’t step past his head. ‘Tony, come on, I have a staff meeting in two hours I have to prepare for.’

‘Remember Clint?’ he asks, and waves the suit over to help him up.

‘Of course I remember Clint, Tony, give me some credit. He likes pizza and archery and every time you call him, he makes angry bird noises at you before he hangs up because it’s three in the morning and you always call him on speaker phone.’

‘I do not always call him on speaker phone, it’s just sometimes it’s easier first thing in the mor – anyway, yes, good, you remember him.’

‘I do, yes,’ she agrees, and waits, patiently.

She does some work on the staff meeting notes while she waits.

‘He’s getting married. Well. He’s getting his vows renewed.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she says, ‘you mentioned it a couple of weeks ago.’

‘Did I? Oh. Well. He doesn’t know he’s getting his vows renewed. It’s going to be his anniversary present from us.’

At this, Pepper raises her eyebrow. ‘Us? Who’s us, Tony? Because I hope it’s the Avengers and not you and me.’

‘It’s you and me,’ he says, tries his most charming smile. The worst part is it works. ‘Are you pleased? It’s a good present, don’t you think?’

She throws her pen at him. ‘God, Tony.’

‘It’s not like we can’t afford to give them the wedding they never got to have,’ Tony says, and finally gets to his feet. ‘I made half a million just lying there on the floor waiting for you to finish powdering your nose or whatever it is you do in the bathroom these days. Don’t you think he deserves it? A proper wedding. Laura would like a proper wedding.’

‘Laura would be happy just having a crystal vase,’ Pepper says, ‘she doesn’t care about spectacle.’

Tony ignores her. ‘Where’s Laura from, anyway? Fury had her records wiped, so I can’t find any record of her and Harcourt isn’t exactly a super common name.’

‘Idaho,’ Pepper says, ‘she thinks it’s hilarious, given that Clint is a hawk.’

Tony squints at her, and when there’s no reaction, Pepper explains that the Idaho motto translates ‘let it be eternal’ and that the inside of the Bartons’ rings are inscribed with ‘hawks mate for life.’

‘That’s stupid.’

‘I think it’s wonderful. She’s happy, he’s happy. Let them be.’

‘That’s why I’m giving them this vow renewal,’ Tony says. ‘C’mon, Pep, you wanna go shopping for a new party dress, don’t lie. And you wanna do wedding dress shopping, c’mon, I know you.’

‘I absolutely do not want to go wedding dress shopping.’

‘Great! I’ll leave you to arrange that trip? It’ll be suspicious if I do it.’

With that he’s gone, and Pepper sighs hard through her nose.

The door bursts back open a few moments later, and Tony says, ‘and we’re getting them a crystal vase, even though it’s stupid and they’ll break it.’

* * *

  _1994_

It’s lunchtime, and Laura’s in that kind of mood where she wants cake and she’s tired, too. So Starbucks seems like a sensible enough idea. She wants cake and coffee, and that’s what she’s going to go and get.

All told, it wasn’t that sensible an idea. There’s a man stood at the counter, tall and broad with sweat-damp blond hair and a – a – some kind of uniform. She can’t tell from the back what exactly it is. But there’s a quiver on his back, stuffed full of arrows, and a bow slung over one shoulder.

‘What?’ she asks, under her breath. The man stood next to her glances at her, but doesn’t reply.

She watches with a slack jaw as the man at the counter asks for five – five! – espresso shots, and his hand moves to his ribs. Laura’s eyes catch the movement, and leans slightly to look. There’s blood, the black of his uniform isn’t disguising it at all, because it’s pooling around his boot. Only a little. But it is. It’s there. He’s bleeding, and he’s downing five espresso shots at once.

‘What?’ she asks again, louder.

The man slaps a fifty on the counter and turns to leave. His eyes catch hers; they’re blue, and tight, but so alert. She feels like he’ll remember what she looks like with her windswept hair and her smudged eyeliner and crooked dress for years after this second of seeing her. She won’t remember if his eyes were blue or green (they’re blue, blue like stormy skies) or how his hair fluffs up at the front but lies flat on the one side (and looks so very, very touchable, the kind of touchable you want to run your hands through and hold tight when you’re skin-to-skin, Laura _no_ ) by the end of the day. By the time she clocks out of the office, she’ll have forgotten what he looks like. But he’ll remember what she looks like, she’s sure.

She licks her lips. His eyes track the motion, but he’s already halfway past her, twisting to avoid brushing past her. He stinks of blood and sweat and coffee and aftershave, and she swallows against the smell.

She’s chewing at her fingernail when an old lady at the front of the line wobbles at the sight of the blood on the floor getting tracked out the door. The barista looks a little faint himself when he realises he just gave someone bleeding heavy enough to leave a trail five espresso shots in one paper cup.

Laura moves to help the old lady sit in a chair, and nudges the barista into getting a mop.

Two days later, she sees the bleeding archer again, this time in the supermarket early in the morning, basket full of dog food and frozen pizzas. He doesn’t see her, and she’s not entirely certain she’s seeing _him_ , because he’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and his hair is neatly spiked with gel. He doesn’t look like he was bleeding and drinking espresso. She thinks she sees him again in the library, checking out a book on dog care. She’s sure his hair was blonder than that, though.

 Then, a week after that lunchtime in Starbucks, she sees him walking his dog, in jogging bottoms that hang too low and a T-shirt that’s too tight over his shoulders, and she can’t stop herself from calling out to him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if someone has a good fc for barney hmu


	14. Gifts and Embers

_1995_

Laura doesn’t know for the longest time what exactly it is Clint does for a living. He’s told her what she’s sure is a watered-down version, a bland ‘I work for the government’ that she knows is a crock of shit but can’t argue. She doesn’t ask many questions; she doesn’t need to. But she knows that there’s more to what Clint says, because what kind of government job allows him to use a bow and arrow and come home covered in blood that might not even be his?

She’s not stupid, and Clint knows that, she knows that he knows that, but they both pretend that he just goes around the world investigating crimes and putting the Bad Guy in jail. It’s easy enough to pretend.

But sometimes Clint gets paged while they’re out, or he’ll see a crime, and he’ll disappear around a corner or down an alleyway, and he’ll come back with a bloody nose and a hole in the knee of his jeans, but he’ll be victorious, swaggering with the pride of it, and she hates it, honestly. He’s doing so well, she knows, but he’s bottled rage, wears it like aftershave (and she tells him his aftershave is _foul_ , but he insists that it’s the nicest one) and a medal pinned to his chest. His anger is – it’s horrible to watch, to see. She tries not to see it. He’s never angry _at_ her, never raises his voice, never mind his fist. But he’s handy with – with fighting. No pencil pusher knows how to kick someone’s knee out and get them in a headlock quite like that.

She has to pull him out of a fight once. Just once. He wrenches his arm free and then softens against her, turns to press his face into her neck and breathe. She touches his back, even though she doesn’t want to. For the first time, she doesn’t want to touch him.

‘It’s okay,’ she says later, when they sit in a diner eating pancakes. 'You didn’t kill him, it’s okay. He’s going to prison for the rest of his life.’

Clint looks at her then, with a sad, barely there smile, and Laura wonders if perhaps she’s made it worse.

(Later, Clint will get a call on his landline that Laura will hear only his half of. He greets Phil cordially enough, and then his easy smile slips towards a glower. He will say that Phil knows what to do, and Laura will remember the permanent marker Clint carries at all times, the spidery writing on a forehead half hidden by blood. She’ll swallow, and move on.)

After that fight, the last Laura sees, a month or so later, she asks Clint what he does.

'Seriously. Not just vague bullshit about investigating weird things and occasionally using a bow and arrow. Legitimately, what do you do? I want to know, Clint.’

It takes him a few minutes to answer her. She waits him out; she’s good at waiting.

‘I work for an agency called S.H.I.E.L.D.,’ he says, ‘they aren’t government, they’re separate from the government. But we work within them. With them.’

‘Never heard of them.’

‘You can’t be a secret agent if everyone knows who you are,’ Clint laughs, but there’s no mirth.

He sounds and looks washed out, exhausted, and if Laura didn’t know better, she’d say it looks like it physically pains him to talk about it.

‘I suppose not,’ she says.

‘I’m one of their field agents,’ he says, ‘when they find something that threatens the safety of – here, in the States, it’s primarily the States’ safety, because we’ve got branches all over the world – but if say, one of our people, an American, he causes trouble out in – in France – we get sent to handle it. We clear up our own messes, right? So that’s why I’m jetting off all over the world. I mean, it’s also because I’m the best shot and I never miss, but that’s neither here nor there.’

‘It is,’ she says, ‘it is here or there. What do you have to have such a good aim for? What are you shooting your bow and arrow at for this – this S.H.I.E.L.D. to find you and take you on? Make you travel across the world?’

He looks at her then, and her chest tightens, but she refuses to let it stop her.

‘Clint, what do you do?’

‘You know what I do,’ he says, with that baleful smile she hates so much.

‘I need you to say it. I can handle it, I can – I can be okay with it, I just have to know for sure. I have to hear the words.’

He huffs out a breath through his nose, shuts his eyes like he can think of nothing he wants less.

‘Clint, please.’

‘I kill people,’ he says it in a breath, a rush of air. ‘I get a file with a name and a place and a date, and I have to go to that place, find that person and kill them by that date. It’s not always killing them; sometimes it’s finding them and bringing them in or rescuing them or whatever. It’s not always killing. But you don’t never miss and get sent to save cats from trees.’

They sit in silence for a few minutes, Laura staring at the wall, Clint picking splinters out of the table with the worn stubs of his nails. Laura loves his hands, she does, she love the warm, dry breadth of them, the worn nails, the calluses on his palms, the wear of his gloves. She loves them. She does. She doesn’t see the blood under his nails, worn black into the whorls of his fingertips, flaking in the creases of his palms. She doesn’t see it. She doesn’t.

He feels a thousand miles away from her even though their feet are touching under the table, even though she can feel the heat of him from here. For a second she looks at him, and remembers the way the tension had fled his body when she pulled him away from the – from the – when she pulled him out of that alley. He is not his anger, she tells herself. He’s not, because he isn’t. He’s more than his anger, he’s more than whatever S.H.I.E.L.D. have made him.

‘When was the last time you - you killed someone?’ she asks, because she needs to know.

Clint sighs. ‘Laura,’ he says, shakes his head. ‘Don’t.’

‘The. Last. _Time_ ,’ she demands but she knows what he’s going to say.

‘Two weeks ago,’ he sighs, and he can’t look her in the eye, stares at the tabletop, digs his nails into the grain. ‘I was gone three days. He was a – he dealt in drugs. Prostitution. Not – not kids. Not kids, but he was. They were young. The girls. And boys. They were young. I had my orders, and I followed them.’

Laura nods. ‘Okay,’ she says.

‘Okay?’

‘Okay.’

They lapse back into silence. It’s uncomfortable, for the first time. The silence is _uncomfortable_ , and Laura itches, fidgets in her seat, looks at the tabletop.

‘I need time,’ she says, when the silence has dragged too long. ‘I need time to – I need to think about this, Clint, I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t apologise,’ he says, with that smile again. He looks old, dark circles and creases at the corner of his eyes. ‘It’s – don’t feel like you have to stay. We can go our separate ways. If that’s what you want to do.’

‘No,’ she says, ‘we’ve done it before, and not again. I’m keeping you, you’re mine, I just need to adjust, is all.’

He goes home that night, leaves Lucky with her, but goes out the door at eight on the dot. He doesn’t try to touch her when she draws away from his lifting arms, and he nods, accepts it without words.

‘Call me,’ he says, ‘I’m at home for the next few days, so let me know when you want me to come get Lucky. Or bring him by, whatever’s better for you, I guess.’

She smiles. It’s not very happy, but it’s genuine. ‘Okay,’ she says, ‘I will do. Stay safe going home. Don’t get into any fights.’

‘I can’t make promises,’ he says. ‘But I’ll try my best.’

She locks the door after he’s gone, bolts it and twists the key and stands there staring at the paint.

‘Fuck,’ she says, rests her forehead on the door, and breathes as best she can. ‘It’s okay. He’s okay. He’s a good man, he’s just. Someone has to take out the trash.’

 She doesn’t cry until she’s in the bath an hour later, Lucky curled up beside the tub and snoozing, but he leaps upright at the first sniffle.

‘Good dog,’ she says, and pets his head with a wet hand. ‘Good dog. Just like your dad, yeah? Always – always doin’ good.’

The sobs break the dam then, push through the wall she’d tried to build, and she chokes on them, shaking and burying her face in her hands. Lucky whines, but can’t get into the bath with her; she’s taught him no. So he sits at her side and whines until she pets his head, but it doesn’t make him happy. He shoves as close as he can, licks her face, rests his head on her shoulder.

She sobs until she has nothing left to sob, and goes to bed. If she dreams of broad, dry hands made red and wet, she doesn’t remember it in the morning.

* * *

_2010_

Grandpa Nick is not _actually_ their Grandpa, but they don’t mind that at all, ‘cause Grandpa Nick is _cool_. He’s the coolest Grandpa, much better than any Grandpa on TV. Sometimes, he’s there when they wake up, and that’s really cool, ‘cause it means he’s staying for a couple of days and he always makes nice food. Soul food, he calls it. It’s not spicy, but it’s filling and flavourful and so good. He says it’s his Grandma’s recipes, and sometimes he balances Lila on his hip and lets her help him roll out pastry and measure out iced tea.

Momma doesn’t let him cook soul food too much, ‘cause she says it’s not good for them in big doses, and as soon as her back’s turned, Grandpa Nick’s pulling the same kind of face that Dad does, and that’s why he’s Grandpa Nick, ‘cause he’s not _really_ Dad’s Dad, but he might as well be.

But it’s not just cooking, sometimes he’ll take off his boots and his coat, and roll up his sleeves and sit by them at the coffee table and draw with them. He doesn’t mind getting covered in paint, ‘cause he likes painting too he says, and Cooper says that he’s pretending not to be as good at painting as he really is.

They put his paintings up on the fridge next to theirs, and he sort of smiles. He never really smiles, their Grandpa, but he smiles at them, kind of, and looks like he’s honoured to have his badly-drawn dog on the fridge. As he should, Lila huffs and puffs later, after bath time, and her and Coop are sat watching the Discovery Channel before bed. It’s an honour to on the fridge.

‘Just ‘cause you’re always on the fridge,’ Cooper huffs back.

Lila shoves at his arm, and says, ‘you gotta try more.’

Sometimes, he comes in the middle of the day, driving a slick black SUV like what Dad drives if he’s got to go to work after coming home, and you can hear it from a mile off. Grandpa Nick doesn’t drive too much, though; if he’s visiting, he’s usually in a jet with Dad and Aunty Nat, or a car with them, and Dad’s driving and complaining about having to drive. But you can hear it, and Lila’s always there waiting for him with a running jump.

He’s already laughing before he’s out of the driver’s seat, because Lila is running to him, and he likes when Lila runs to greet him.

‘Hello, little bird,’ he laughs, and ducks to scoop her up.

She runs better than she walks, but she tumbles better than she runs, and Laura won’t appreciate her daughter’s face being covered in grit.

‘You’re getting heavy,’ he tells her.

‘Naw,’ she replies, and presses an ice-lolly wet kiss to his cheek. ‘Missed you.’

‘I missed you, too,’ he says. ‘I brought you a present.’

She beams with Dad’s crooked smile, and Grandpa Nick kisses her hair before carrying her around to the boot of the car to pop the hood and see what he’s got stowed away. Emergency travel kits, a first-aid kit, a change of clothes, two locked crates of weapons. In the middle of it all, a bag, brightly coloured and taped shut.

Lila’s breath draws, and Grandpa Nick laughs, taps her knuckles with a finger when she reaches.

‘Nuh-uh, little bird,’ he teases, ‘I gotta ask your Momma if you’ve been good. Where’s your brother, I’ve got a present for him, too.’

 ‘I’unno,’ Lila grunts, and flops against him because it’s truly _horrible_ that she’s not allowed to see her present just yet.

Grandpa Nick laughs, and steadies her against his hip, scoops up the bag and elbows the boot shut, making for the steps up into the house.

‘Laura?’ he calls, and Momma appears by the stairs, wiping her hands on the tea towel.

‘Nick,’ she smiles, ‘I heard the car, but I wasn’t expecting you.’

‘Nat’s busy,’ he explains, and lifts the bag. ‘Where’s Cooper? I’ve got presents, if they’ve been good.’

‘They’ve been good,’ Momma assures him, ‘well, as good as they can ever be, with who their Daddy is, ha-ha. I’ll fetch Coop, he’s reading upstairs. Stars and that, you know what he’s like. Maria bought him a new collection of star maps, so he’s been up to his eyeballs in them.’

Grandpa Nick nods, and takes Lila over to the couch. He’s not allowed to sit in the armchair, because the armchair is Dad’s, and only Dad’s allowed to sit in it. Momma too, sometimes, but normally only if Dad’s already sat in it, because Momma likes not using chairs if Dad’s available.

(They don’t talk about it, but Dad’s already had to buy a bigger armchair to fit all four of them in. Dad does good to not complain about sore legs when he’s got Momma _and_ Lila _and_ Coop sat on him at the same time, but Lila knows they must be heavy.)

 Grandpa Nick sits down on the couch and balances Lila on his knee and the bag sits next to him, nice and neat and bright and Lila wants to see what’s in it so bad.

‘I’ve been good,’ she says, and Grandpa Nick raises an eyebrow.

Lila purses her lips, and Grandpa Nick laughs, turns to see Cooper coming down the stairs at speed, skidding on the floor and almost falling.

‘Grandpa Nick!’ he yells, and rushes over.

Lila tries to take up enough space that Coop can’t jump up onto the couch, but she’s only little, and Coop finds a corner of their Grandpa left to steal for his own.

‘Goodness,’ Grandpa Nick laughs, ‘you’re getting big now! You’re eating all your greens, eh?’

 ‘I lost three teeth,’ Coop says, and smiles to show them off. A canine and an incisor on one side, and a tooth from the bottom centre, ‘so I can’t bite too good. Greens are soft, so I don’t gotta bite good.’

Grandpa Nick looks impressed, and it’s hard to impress Grandpa Nick, Lila knows this.

‘So you’ve definitely been good, then?’ he asks, ‘if you lost that many teeth, you must have been good.’

Momma grins at him, and Grandpa Nick offers her a smile in return.

‘I’ve been good,’ Coop promises.

‘And me,’ Lila agrees, nodding.

‘Momma?’ Coop asks, ‘we’ve been good, right?’

‘You have,’ Momma agrees, ‘you’ve been very good.’

Grandpa Nick nods, and carefully slides Lila off his knee and onto the floor, making sure her feet are under her before he lets go of her. She flops onto her backside, sits there waiting, because presents are about the only thing that make her wait. Coop’s better at waiting, but Coop’s older, so he doesn’t count.

Grandpa Nick pulls a stack of colouring books out of the brightly coloured bag, and Lila pushes back up onto her feet.

‘Now,’ he says, holds them just out of her reach. ‘You have to try extra hard with these, little bird. I had these made especially for you, with your Uncle Phil’s help. You promise to try extra hard?’

She does, of course she does, and she doesn’t snatch, because Momma taught her not to snatch. Sitting back down, Coop leans over her shoulder to look, and they paw through the books for a minute.

‘Cap!’ she exclaims, when she recognises the pictures. ‘Coop, look. It’s Cap!’

Grandpa Nick smiles that soft smile that’s even rarer than his other smiles, and nods.

‘We found some of his old art,’ he says, ‘some of the pictures he drew. Your Uncle Phil, he helped us turn them into a colouring book for you.’

Lila breathes hard, and then yells, throwing herself at Grandpa Nick’s knee, because she can’t reach any higher to hug him.

He ruffles her hair, and she babbles thanks to him.

‘Just take your time colouring them in,’ he says, ‘Cap would want that, don’t you think?’

‘Uh-huh!’

She picks up the books and trots over to her spot at the coffee table. Momma gets her a cushion to sit on, and she starts organising her colours, not caring about what Grandpa Nick got Coop.

‘Now then, young man,’ Grandpa Nick says, and Coop straightens, blinks up at him and Grandpa Nick has to reach down to brush his fringe out of his face. ‘Your Momma needs to give your hair a cut, look at this mop.’

‘He likes it like that,’ Momma says, and Coop nods.

Grandpa Nick hums, and turns his attention to his bag.

‘I had the guys down in R&D knock this up for you, ‘cause I know you like your stars. You _do_ still like stars, right?’

‘I love stars,’ Coop assures him.

‘Good, ‘cause this would be a waste otherwise.’

He pulls a small box from the bag, embossed with the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo, and Coop wiggles it open, jaw dropping.

‘It’s a ‘scope!’ he says, and pulls a small telescope from the tissue paper.

It’s small, designed especially for a boy of four, and Coop holds it reverently.

‘This is for me?’ he asks, and Grandpa Nick nods.

‘Especially for you,’ he says. ‘Just as good as a big one, ‘cept this one is just your size.’

‘Just my size,’ Coop breathes, and his legs bounce. He’d be jumping for joy if he was on his feet, but he’s still sat nicely, because Coop’s a nice boy.

Grandpa Nick smiles some more. ‘Maybe if you’re good and your Momma lets you stay up, you can show me some of the stars later.’

Coop looks up and Grandpa Nick can see stars in his eyes, a universe waiting for discovery. Lila’s got a crayon halfway in her mouth, but she’s never been one to be outshone by her brother.

* * *

_2014_

Clint comes stumbling through the workshop a little after lunchtime, still in his boxers and a zip-through Tony is almost completely sure he saw Nat wearing last week, but nothing else. His eyes are half-open and he’s doing the sleepy shuffle that Tony’s become very familiar with. For a man that seems to do nothing but sleep, he’s always half-asleep in the Tower.

He considers asking JARVIS to keep an eye on him while he’s asleep. He knows that Clint has nightmares. They all have nightmares. More than once, they’ve – the two of them anyway, he and Clint – ended up on the couch in front of the TV with fresh smoothies and Scooby Doo playing on the big screen. But maybe there are more nightmares, quieter and harsher and worse. Maybe.

He won’t invade Clint’s privacy though, not now. Sometimes, Clint’s eyes flicker, his expression blanking out, and Nat seems to have it under control, but Tony worries. It’s the quiet, uninvolved worry. But it’s worry all the same.

‘Ah, Barton, there you are.’

Halfway through a step, Clint sways to a stop and turns.

‘What?’ he grunts, and pads down the steps into the workshop proper.

Tony has respect for him for walking barefoot over the floor, because not even he’ll do that.

‘Come here,’ Tony says, and marvels at how Clint goes without hesitation, falling in beside him, hands in the pockets of his hoodie. ‘I need your hearing aids, gimme. Just one will do.’

‘What?’

‘Hearing aid. Hand now. Please.’

He thrusts his hand up into the space between them without turning from the mess on his bench, and waggles his fingers.

‘Why d’you need my aid?’

Clint’s nose is wrinkling and his lip’s curling, but he obligingly reaches up and pulls one of his aids out, drops it into Tony’s waiting palm.

‘Thanks. You can go now.’

Head tilting to compensate for the sudden deafness, Clint eyes him, and then shrugs, picks his way back to the gangway to head back the way he came. He’s a little lopsided, starting on one side of the stairs and ending up on the other, tripping up one step. Tony tries not to laugh. Clint waves two fingers over his shoulder.

‘Shut up, Stark,’ Clint replies, and tosses the other hearing aid across the workshop to him.

He grumbles to himself all the way back to his bedroom, and on his second pass through the workshop, he’s fully dressed with horrendously out-of-date BTE aids hooked over his ears.

‘Shut up,’ he says again, and Tony looks affronted.

‘I didn’t say a word,’ he says.

‘Did you just dismantle my hearing aids?’ Clint asks.

Tony ducks down over the mess of parts, and acts like he didn’t hear him.

Clint shrugs and completes his goal of going to the kitchen to get what should, three hours ago, have been breakfast. As a man who eats cereal for three meals a day, Tony cannot really judge.

So he continues to dismantle Clint’s hearing aids, and gets to work replacing the parts. Making the earmold will be the hardest part, but Tony’s sure he can rig something together to make it. He’s got some vinyl or whatever kicking around somewhere he can use. If not, Pep will be able to get something done for him.

‘J.A.R.V.I.S.?’ he asks.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘What have we got for one of those - what does he call them? – CIC hearing aids? Have we got anything to make them from? Can you see what we’ve got?’

 He wheels himself with a push of a foot over to the computers while J.A.R.V.I.S. searches, and opens up a page of code while he’s waiting. It doesn’t take long, and he’s only managed to knock out a dozen lines before J.A.R.V.I.S. is running back a list of components found in the Tower.

‘Alright, good, good. Can you get someone to run all of that up to me?’

‘You are putting a lot of effort into something that will be broken in as little as one raid,’ J.A.R.V.I.S. offers.

Tony stares at his coding.

‘I understand, sir.’

J.A.R.V.I.S. vanishes from the screens, and leaves Tony to his coding.

* * *

_2015_

Wanda’s home for a week or so, emergency pending, and Pietro is glad to see her again.

‘I need your help,’ he says by way of greeting, and throws a few half-remembered recipes their Mama used to make at her for her to sift through. A few moments pass, and she’s sending the missing parts back to him.

‘It’s not difficult to Google it,’ she says, ‘you remembered what made Mama’s special.’

Clint looks at them, and they wave him off. Throwing a hand up, he says, ‘I’ll just take these upstairs then, shall I? A bellboy in my own home, look at this,’ under his breath. Wanda throws some familial affection his way that makes his ears burn lobster red, and he sticks a finger up at her over his shoulder.

‘Momma!’ Pietro yells, ‘Dad’s being rude again!’

‘Bend his fingers!’ Laura yells back, and Pietro makes for the stairs, but shows no sign of actually following him.

Laura appears in the doorway to the kitchen after a moment, Nathaniel on her hip, and a towel over her shoulder. She looks tired, Wanda thinks, and misses being here something chronic.

‘I missed you,’ Laura says, as though she knows, and extends her free arm.

‘I missed you, too,’ Wanda says, and crosses the space to hug her, putting her arm around Nathaniel too.

While she’s there, she gives them both a cursory scan, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary for either of them.

‘Nath’s growing fast,’ she says, and brushes her fingers over his head. He blinks up at her, and she ducks to coo at him.

‘Takes after his daddy,’ Laura agrees. ‘It’s good to see you, Wanda, you’re looking happy.’

‘I am,’ she nods, smiling soft. ‘Steve works us hard, but it’s good training. There’s a lot to learn, and a lot of people to talk to.’

‘And read?’

‘I try not to, unless I have permission. Vision, he says I can look whenever I like, but I don’t, it feels invasive.’

 _Liar_ , Pietro thinks, and she throws a curse back to him that rattles in his eardrums.

Nathaniel starts gurgling, so Laura takes her leave, disappearing into a quiet corner of the house – which had seemed so impossible to find some months ago.

‘Things are quieter now,’ Pietro explains when she asks about it, as they climb the stairs, ‘now that you’re gone, and the hawkbabies are at school, it’s a lot quieter. I think the old man likes it quieter. It’s just me and James here most days, and Momma likes having us here.’

Wanda nods, and tuts at how Clint’s left her suitcases strewn across her bed. With a flick of her wrist, she’s got them lined up nice and neat, and sets about sorting through their contents, while Pietro sits on the corner of the bed and fiddles with trinkets in the case closest to him, her hairbrush and the zipper of her makeup bag, things that, in Sokovia, had seemed so trivial.

‘Why did you ask about Mama’s recipes?’ she asks as she carefully stacks a series of folded pairs of socks.

‘I want to cook,’ Pietro says, ‘for them. Momma and the old man and the hawkbabies. I want to cook our food for them. Momma tries to cook our food, but it’s not the same.’

 Wanda nods. ‘We’ll go shopping,’ she says, ‘we’ll make the old man take us, and we won’t tell him. He can’t read minds, so he won’t know.’

As soon as they’re on the road, Clint says, ‘what are you hiding?’

‘Nothing,’ they reply, immediately, and he stares at them both in the mirror.

‘You’re both shit liars,’ he says, ‘no poker face at all. Zero out of ten, I’m disowning you both.’

‘Not all of us are Natasha,’ Wanda says.

At the same time, Pietro adds, ‘you wanna lie to Momma? Not a good idea.’

‘I lie to your mother all the time,’ Clint says.

‘Liar,’ they chirp in perfect, harmonised unison.

 Clint elects to ignore them and dump them at the entrance to the supermarket.

‘I’ve got to go pick up a few things for the house,’ he explains, ‘I’ll be an hour or so, will that be long enough for you to get what you need? Do you need money, I’ve got Laura’s copy of my card on me too, I think?’

‘I’ve got money,’ Wanda assures him, ‘Steve makes sure we get paid.’

Clint squints at her, and she squints back. Thoughts rattle against the steel trap of his mind, but she can only just about hear their existence, not their content. He nods, and salutes them. They salute back – Pietro even snaps his heels, just to be a brat – and Clint pulls out of his space, disappears around a corner.

The twins look at each other, and then dash inside.

They find everything they need, and Pietro has to look up a few items on the internet to be sure that that brand or that product or that mix is kosher, but their baskets are full and they’re heading for the checkout with a few minutes to spare.

‘Do you think they’ll mind?’ Pietro asks, as they pack their things away into bags, ‘I’ve never cooked before. Not by myself.’

‘You won’t be by yourself,’ Wanda sniffs, and hands him a bag of potatoes, ‘I’ll be there too.’

‘You know what I mean,’ he grumbles, ‘not with Momma, or even the old man. You know he cooks?’

‘I was in the house before you,’ she reminds him, ‘for a week.’

‘I’m twelve minutes older than you,’ he retorts, and she makes a rude gesture.

‘I’ve got a twin,’ the cashier tells them, ‘he’s as much a pain.’

Pietro looks affronted. Wanda preens.

Clint is idling in the same space he left when they leave the store, and he looks at the bags.

‘Do I want to know?’ he asks.

‘No,’ Wanda replies, and tucks the bags down between her and Pietro’s feet. ‘We’ve got cold things, don’t drive like an old man.’

Clint drives five miles under the speed limit for twenty minutes.

Back home, they hide everything they can in their rooms, but the cold things have to go into the fridge. They’re all innocuous enough, and when Laura looks at them, the twins feign innocence. She eyes them, but says nothing.

Working in the silence and near-darkness with his sister is nice, familiar, and Pietro thinks for a few aching moments of home, of Sokovia. They used to do this with their mother, when they were young, _so_ young. Their father would be working late, often through the night, making up extra hours for extra pay, when it was available, and they’d stay up all night baking and preparing meals, working in near silence. It was all muscle memory for them by the time they were ten, able to knead bread and stir mixtures and measure fruits without needing the guiding hand and lilting whispers of their mother. It is much the same now, quiet and familiar, and they twist and turn around each other as though they’ve had no time apart, so aware of the other’s form that they’re extensions of each other.

Of course, Wanda communicates mostly in silence, pokes at her brother’s mind to get what she needs without having to say a word, and most of the time, Pietro remembers that he doesn’t need to say a word either. They mix and knead and measure late into the night. Once, Nathaniel wakes up, cries, and they pause in perfect stillness when Clint gets up to take him. They’d made sure their baby brother had everything he needed up in the nursery so that Clint wouldn’t need to come down. But he still comes halfway down the stairs to hiss at them to go to bed.

‘In a minute,’ Pietro promises.

A minute turns into ten, into thirty, into dawn, and they hurry through the last of the clean-up to scurry upstairs and into their beds before Laura gets up and finds the cooling breads and cakes on the counter ready for breakfast.

* * *

 

_2016_

Clint’s snoring, face-first and half-covered in the covers Laura’s mostly stolen. She gets colder easier than he does, she can’t help it, so she steals the covers and drapes herself over him to make him warm. That’s the way it’s been for twenty years, and that’ll be the way it’ll be for another twenty. That’s just how it is, sorry, can’t change it. Clint doesn’t mind so much anyway; if he can feel Laura’s heart beating against his back, or his arm, or even his leg that one time they fell asleep half-on the couch during a _Die Hard_ marathon, he’s happy. He’s content, he can sleep.

So long as he’s snoring, Laura knows he’s asleep, and happy, and okay, and she can sleep soundly enough. They generally sleep with the door half-open anyway, just in case, so when it pushes open, neither of them particularly stir. They straighten a little, because they’re sprawled out over the bed, and they know, even in sleep, that they need to give the kids room to climb in with them, because otherwise there won’t _be_ any room.

But it’s not the kids that are climbing into bed.

A cold hand touches Laura’s bare elbow, and she rolls her arm, stirs.

‘Whassit?’ she whispers.

‘I had a bad dream,’ James whispers back.

Laura reaches behind her and tugs the blankets up a little, pats the space.

‘Keep that hand away from me,’ she murmurs, and returns to using Clint’s shoulder blade as a pillow.

 James carefully climbs into bed behind her, fitting into the space she’s left, and tucks his metal arm under the pillow she’s forgone in favour of her husband to keep it out of the way. She’s warm, but that’s probably the brushed cotton pyjamas and the half-dozen blankets she’s got, and he gravitates towards it, like the mattress, firm and holding against their combined weight, is soft, sinking in the middle. James knows he weighs more than Clint, but there’s not even a creak of a spring to suggest another hundred-and-eighty pounds has been added to the mattress.

Laura twists to give James more room, and he can smell her shampoo. For a moment, a fleeting, nigh-non-existent moment, James thinks about how easy it would be to kill them both, because they are both still fast asleep, unaware of the killer now sharing their bed, and he shivers. Laura reaches back blindly, adjusts the blankets over him, pats the rise of his hip because it’s the only place she can reach. He breathes in the smell of her hair, the fabric softener still clinging to the pillow. It’s soft, and nice, and familiar, because it’s the same fabric softener she uses throughout the house. His pillow, on his army bed downstairs, it smells the same. But of course it does.

He breathes in some more, exhales silently, gentle so as not to disturb her.

He doesn’t remember his dream, just that it was bad, just that it was bad enough to wake him and make him seek out the comfort of his mother’s bed. He hasn’t thought about his mother’s bed for – for – since he was a boy, since he was still in single digits. ‘Course, he thinks, in that abstract, unfamiliar way of a memory he can’t be certain of, he’d had Steve by then, and Steve always let him climb into bed with him, ‘less he was ill, but then Bucky would sleep in the chair by his bed, when he wasn’t watching over him. Nine and so intent on making sure Steve breathed right through the night, or his fever was checked on the regular. He was a good kid, James thinks, he took care of Steve because someone had to, and Sarah could only do so much.

He shivers again, and Laura finds his flesh arm, drags it over her until he’s pulled flush to her back, his hand flat against Clint’s ribs. It’s comfortable in an uncomfortable way, and it would be so easy to pull a knife from his pocket, stab them both. He wiggles his fingers, careful not to dig them into Clint’s side, because that was the side that he’d hurt, that was scarred with the bullet of a jet's machine gun, a scar he could have had removed but chose to keep.

Laura sighs soft, relaxes, falls asleep again, and Bucky traces the jagged, ratty edge of the scar against Clint’s side, follows the shape without looking. Clint rolls his shoulder, but continues to snore, completely at ease.

James rests his hand against it, covers it, and his arm whirs for half a second, adjusts to the position when he drops his head onto the pillow it’s hidden under. He shuts his eyes, tries not to see blood behind them, to not see whatever it was he’d dreamt of that’s more a _feeling_ than a vision.

He breathes, and breathes, and breathes some more, and Laura finds his hand, rests hers atop it, rubs against the tendons. You’re okay, the gesture says, sleep, you’re okay, we’ve got you.

A long while passes before he drifts, and when he wakes, Clint’s gone, but Laura remains, spread out into the space Clint had occupied, and has James tucked up against her side like he’s three feet shorter and a hundred pounds lighter, like he’s one of her small, breakable children.

‘You okay?’ she asks, and brushes her hand through his hair. ‘Sleep better?’

‘Yeah,’ he nods, counts the flecks of sunlight in her eyes. ‘Yeah, I’m okay.’

‘Good,’ she hums, and kisses his forehead, pushes herself upright. ‘I’m glad you came,’ she adds, ‘that you didn’t just sit in the lounge by yourself.’

‘You said I could,’ he says.

‘We did,’ she nods, ‘which is why I’m glad you did. Come on, then, kiddo, I think it’s about time we had breakfast.’

He breathes in the smell of her pillows one last time before pushing upright and following her downstairs.

* * *

_2003_

‘Barton, you’ll be running security because we know everyone likes to look at your ass in a nice suit,’ Nat grumbles to herself, in an over-exaggerated nasal voice, and wrinkles her nose.

Her reflection wrinkles her nose back, and Nat huffs out a breath, examines her eyeliner, checks for clumps in her mascara, a smear of lipstick in her Cupid’s bow. There’s nothing, of course, because Clint had insisted that he do her makeup.

‘You still think electric blue is fashionable,’ he’d grunted, and she had sat there letting him rifle through her makeup bag and complain about her choice in mascara for almost five whole minutes, even if he did praise her for upgrading her taste in eyeshadow.

It’s only because of Laura, she thinks, Clint doesn’t give much of a shit about makeup really, but Laura’s taught him well, because Clint can’t _not_ pick information up, whether he wants to know it or not.

Huffing again, she fluffs her hair, twirls a curl against her temple, and pushes up her boobs in her dress.

‘Are you done?’ Clint crackles in her ear, ‘I’ve got eyes on the target, but I can’t do shit from here.’

‘I’m done,’ she assures, and picks up her bag, gives herself a last once-over and leaves the bathroom.

She’s not done, she’s not done at all, because she’d had to look at Clint’s ass in a nice suit when he’d gotten out of the car, and she’d thought she was prepared but no, no she wasn’t.

The gala is in full swing, as it should be, because these things are always in full swing. They’d arrived on time, looking suitably wonderful, Nat in a sweeping emerald dress that goes perfectly with her freshly-dyed blonde hair, swept up off her neck to draw all attention to the choker around said neck, which, in turn, drew attention to the plunging neckline of her dress.

Clint had pulled faces at the dress, but Clint pulled faces at anything more than a tracksuit, and Nat suspects he’s just Looking Out For Her. He doesn’t mean to be overprotective, he just – he can’t help it. He’s got a _wife_ , of course he can’t help it.

Eyes are on her as soon as she leaves the bathroom, and she ignores them, chin high, sweeping through the crowd and smiling pleasantly at anyone who touches her arm, seeks her attention.

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologises, ‘give me a moment.’

She’s searching for Clint, because he’d been in sight when she went to the bathroom to hide the tracker, but he wasn’t where she left him, and it takes her a few moments to find him, stood with the other wealthy ladies’ bodyguards, engaged in conversation. Or, they’re talking, and Clint’s visibly struggling to keep up.

‘You’re cute,’ she tells him, and his gaze shoots across the hall to where she’s standing.

His hand, at his side, looking very innocent as it dangles there, carefully signs S A V E M E and she smiles at him.

He’s fucking devastating, of course he is, the man is devastating in the oldest pair of tracksuit bottoms and the rattiest T-shirt. She doesn’t stand a chance when he’s in _Versace_. It is Versace, right? She can’t remember what name Coulson had supplied. Maybe it wasn’t Versace, maybe Versace was the dress? Whatever, it doesn’t matter, the suit suits him, and even if he looks uncomfortable in the conversation, he wears it well.

But of course he does, it’s tailored especially to his frame, creases in the exact way it needs to make her remember the way her heart had hammered in her chest that first November in New York, when they’d gone for lunch for her fifteenth birthday, and Clint had joked about spoiling her rotten. She breathes through her nose, signs N O back to him, and Clint looks like he wants to stick his fingers up at her.

Bastard, she thinks, when her heart skips a beat. Selfish bastard.

Swallowing, she strides over, chin high, shoulders back, easy smile. A picture perfect wealthy heiress attending a charity gala for one thing or another. She’s devastating too, she knows that. But Clint just looks at her with relief in those storm-blue eyes of his.

‘Sorry, boys,’ she says, ‘I need to steal my man.’

They all gape a bit, but Clint is already falling in at her side, arm offered to her, and she takes it, squeezes his bicep, and leads him away. His shoes don’t make a sound, and she focuses on the click of hers as they walk for the garden.

‘This isn’t proper,’ he tells her, ‘you’re supposed to be finding the target.’

‘I’ve found him,’ she says, ‘he’s at your seven. It’s fine, I’ve got a task for you, as my most _favourite_ bodyguard, to do.’

‘Is that so.’

‘It gets you out of the dancehall?’

‘God, please.’

 Nat reaches up to comb a loose couple of strands back into his side-parting. He looks so perfect, and she hates it. She _hates_ it.

‘We need to find somewhere to keep the target,’ she says, and takes two flutes of champagne from a passing server. She hands one to him. ‘I’m sure you can think of a suitable excuse to find me a room to be alone with him.’

Clint opens his mouth, and then his jaws clack, and he bites back the ‘you’re _nineteen_ ’ that she knows is coming. She knows it’s coming, because he always says it. She could be thirty, and he’ll still be saying it like it means anything. Normally, she reminds him that he’s not old enough to be her father. It doesn’t do anything to stop him, but it almost makes her feel better.

(It makes her stomach churn, because nothing like getting heart palpitations over the man that considers you a sibling, a daughter. Nothing like it! Great feeling, that, fantastic, must-do for all young women. Fucking hell.)

‘Alright,’ he says, and rearranges her hair. ‘Take care of yourself out there.’

‘I can kill a man with my thighs,’ she reminds him.

‘That’s what I’m worried about,’ he sniffs, and extends a fist. She bumps it, gentle, because she’s wearing rings, and she has it on good authority (his) that it _really_ hurts when you bump fists with rings on.

He lopes off down the corridor, and she doesn’t watch him take the stairs two at a time, no she doesn’t.

Later, he’s using his tie as a handwrap, and his jacket sleeve is torn at the seam. His hair is mussed and he’s got blood under his nose and splattered down his shirt. He’s got no right to be handsome like that. He’s got a black eye coming.

She sighs, watches his face as they stand over the target, waiting on extraction.

‘What?’ he asks.

‘Nothing,’ she sighs again, itches at her hair. ‘Nothing, just. Higher authority’s going to be mad I let you get a black eye.’

‘Eh, it’s my fault,’ he says, ‘I was too busy keeping an eye on you.’

She thought she was over this, she really did. She thought she’d long since stamped down the last of the embers, and left the fire pit empty and cold, but no, no there has to be one last ember. Fuck it.

‘That’s stupid,’ she says.

‘I can handle myself,’ she adds a minute later.

‘I know,’ he says. ‘But I’m always going to look out for you, we’ve been over this. It ain’t gonna change.’

‘Don’t get yourself killed for me.’

‘I’ll try. Same goes for you, you know. I know you keep trying to protect me, ‘cause of orders from up high. I know she told you to keep me safe. But I’ve been at this longer, you know. I’m bigger than you, I’ll be fine.’

Nat smiles, and hates that she feels the sadness in it, so she angles it to the floor instead of to him. ‘That’s not going to change any time soon. I’ve got my orders, same as you.’

Clint grunts, and shoves his hands in his pockets, slouches. Coulson tells them he’s on his way, get to the back entrance.

Nat lets him carry the target through to the service entrance, tells herself she’s hanging back to keep an eye on his six, but she still glances at his ass.


	15. The House and the Gift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve has an emotion, Nat attempts to display love, and Clint makes a grandiose gesture of affection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay in uploading, AUs have taken over my life lmfao

_2015_

It’s not the first time that Steve hasn’t known how to feel, and he hates that he –

No, that’s wrong. It’s not that he doesn’t know how to feel, it’s that he doesn’t know how to not feel what he’s got churning in his gut, aching between his ribs like that stitch he had in basic training, when he couldn’t even keep pace with the slowest. It hurts almost as much as it did to begin with to admit that it hurts, but it does.

It positively _burns_.

Tony is making some vague noises that sound like talking, but honestly, Steve stopped listening so long ago that it’s white noise. Bruce is talking too, quiet, flicking through a book the boy – Cooper, Steve thinks, he has a name, he needs to learn it – had left on the couch when Clint called him through to the yard. It’s been an hour or so, Laura in the kitchen with Natasha, and their laughter cuts through the sound of Tony talking.

When he gets to his feet, abrupt and without warning, he knocks the table, and Tony’s mug falls over, spilling what remained of his coffee.

‘Steve!’ he exclaims, and hurries to mop it up.

After almost four years, Steve doesn’t think he’s ever seen Tony rush to clean anything up. Not when it’s been anything other than some technological experiment or another, anyway.

Steve turns on his heel and strides for the door, slamming it shut behind him. It shuts out the noise and leaves him in the early afternoon stillness. He breathes, scrubs his face with a hand, and hops down the steps before pacing off down the path, intending to go and sit in the Quinjet for a while. He needs to – to – to calm down, to asses and re-evaluate, and quell the burning in his chest.

Laura finds him sat in one of the seats, resting his head in one hand, the other picking at the leg of his jeans.

‘Steve?’

It’s on the tip of his tongue to tell her to go away, it’s right there. He bites it back.

She eases herself into the seat next to him, and he automatically straightens, hand moving to her back to support her. She offers him a soft smile of gratitude, shifts to get comfortable, and then waits. He knows now, as he looks at her watching him with hands on her bump, exactly where Nat learnt to do it.

 He expects her to say a hundred things. She doesn’t say anything, just sits, and laughs once.

‘Sorry,’ she says, rubs at – what had they said the name was? They were naming it after Natasha, right? But it was a boy; she’d called him a traitor. Nathaniel, they’re calling him Nathaniel – her boy, ‘he was kicking. Did you know Clint kicks in his sleep?’

Steve didn’t know that.

‘Not so much now,’ she continues, undeterred by the lack of answer, ‘he just snores a lot now, but when we were younger, he used to kick like a mule.’

When she gets no reply, she sighs, runs a hand through her hair.

‘Clint’s worried,’ she says, ‘he’s always worried, I’ve never known him to not worry, to be honest. He said this isn’t like you.’

It’s exactly like him, Steve thinks, but he doesn’t say it. Instead he says, ‘sorry for worrying you.’

‘I’m not worried,’ she assures him, and reaches for his hand. He gives it, but it’s cold and unyielding in hers, warmer and soft with soap and love. ‘I know this – me, the kids, the farm – it’s a lot to take in. Nat told me about what he’s been like. In the Tower. I thought I’d taught him better.’

‘He was a totally different person,’ Steve mumbles, looks at their hands. Laura’s thumb rubs effortless across his knuckles. ‘He was – I would never have ever expected this. Or anything. He joked about not having a girlfriend!’

Laura laughs, a pretty sound, like steam curling from a mug of cocoa. ‘That’s his favourite joke,’ she tells him, ‘because he doesn’t have a girlfriend.’

Steve looks at the ring on her finger. Getting his back had been Clint’s first port of call after introductions were made, and there’s no way to better set the tone than casually sticking your hand down your wife’s bra to get your ring back, Steve supposes.

‘No,’ he agrees, but he doesn’t laugh. ‘I suppose not. But – it doesn’t bother you?’

‘Of course not,’ she says, looking a little baffled, ‘why would it? He’s pretended to be married before now, to another S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Honestly, you ever want to embarrass him, ask him about the time he and Bobbi had to go to Vegas. It’s been maybe ten years? He still can’t talk about it without blushing.’

‘Where I come from,’ Steve starts, and then stops. His hand flexes, but Laura doesn’t let go, squeezes gently, reassuring.

‘It’s alright,’ she tells him, because he realises that she thinks he needs to hear it. Maybe he does. He’s long since stopped knowing what he needs and what he doesn’t. ‘Clint is – it’s taken us a while, to get him to where he is.’

‘Us?’ Steve asks, because who is “us”?

‘Me,’ she says, ‘and Phil, and Nat, and Fury, too. Even the dog. We put a lot of effort into him, a lot of time and – well, not money, but you know, all that stuff. Took us twenty years to get him here.’

Steve looks out through the cockpit to the view of distant woodland and a field. He thinks he smells strawberries.

‘He did well for himself,’ he says, and she nods.

‘He did very well. We both did. I couldn’t ask anything more than this from him, not now. But enough about him; what’s eating you?’

There are a lot of things eating him, he thinks. Most of them aren’t awful.

Laura waits patiently, still holding his hand with soft thumb rubbing against his scabbed knuckles. He sighs once, opens his mouth to talk, and then changes his mind.

‘There’s – I just feel – ‘

He stops, and considers some more. Eventually, he mumbles something about not knowing Clint nearly as well as he thought he did.

‘You know him well enough,’ Laura offers, and the naivety is sweet. Charming, even. She doesn’t understand, but how could he expect her to?

‘No,’ Steve sighs, and pulls his hand free, gets up to pace, up and down the gangway until the rhythm of his steps sounds like a familiar song on the radio. ‘No, I really don’t. I don’t know him at _all_.’

Laura opens her mouth to reply, but turns at the last second and Clint appears in the gangway, hand raised to rap his knuckles against the open door.

‘Nick’s almost done with dinner,’ he says, ‘he wants you in.’

Steve sees the expression cross his face, the question; _everything alright?_

Laura smiles at him and nods, reaches for Steve to help her up, and he braces his hands as she levers herself out of the seat.

‘We’re coming,’ she teases, when Clint fidgets. ‘Honestly, honey, I can’t zip around like you lot can.’

As they walk back across the field to the house, Steve trailing behind them, he watches Laura nudging her husband with an elbow, watches him over-exaggeratedly rock to the side like he’s about to fall, listens to them bicker and laugh and bicker some more.

‘I’m not letting you anywhere near me again,’ Laura is saying when Steve bothers to actually _listen_. ‘You’re always getting me into these situations and then what, eh?’

Clint stretches his arms above his head, and Steve can hear at least three vertebrae and all of his fingers crack.

‘I’ll just build an extension,’ he says, ‘make another couple of rooms. I’ll probably have to, with this lot. We’ve only got two spare rooms.’

Laura snorts, and when Clint drops his arms, she loops both of hers around one of his.

‘You’ll love them being here; don’t pretend like it’s a bad thing.’

Steve chews the inside of his cheek and returns to his seat by Tony and Bruce without a word, ignoring Tony’s pointed probing as Clint and Laura head through to the kitchen to help Nick with the last few details.

Clint starts bugging his children with fingers behind their ears and down their necks, making them squeal and try to twist away, to go and wash their hands, and Tony puts down his whatever-it-is to watch Lila try to climb her dad to tussle with him, as if she could possibly win. Her laughter when he catches her ankle and swings her upside-down (not without its protests from Laura, who reminds him that they are _about to eat, Clint, for heaven’s sake!_ ) fills the house, and Steve almost feels at home.

Almost.

* * *

_2001_

Clint is on his fourteenth drink and eighth pint. Nat had him slow down and nurse his drink; her argument was that the longer he spent drinking, the longer his drink had time to get into his bloodstream. He argues that he was getting drunk just fine at his pace before, because he was doing shots, and Clint was good at a lot of things but shots weren’t one of them.

Nat is sure he’s going to fall asleep in a minute. She’s also sure the drinks he’s been buying her (and then drinking himself, because someone has to get him home and if he’s utterly incapable it won’t be him) combined with his have entirely eaten the budget for the mission.

‘At least we got him, eh, kid?’

Nat hasn’t been a kid for fourteen years. But she smiles, indulgent and loving, and runs her hand through his hair, army short and rough against her palm.

'Eh,’ Clint huffs, and downs his pint, signals for another. 'Was almost too easy, don’t you think?’

'You’re a good agent, Clint,’ Nat assures him. 'You did better than we planned, because you’re better than we planned.’

Clint squints at her. Sober, he might have picked up the nuances that were surely lost in translation between her Russian thought and English word.

'What?’ he asks.

'I got us this mission because it’s Level Five,’ she tells him, eyes the barman. Clint gets another pint, and she’s pleased to note there’s a good inch less in there.

'And,’ she continues when he’s gone. 'I wanted to get us a mission that would give us this downtime and extra budget.’

'Oh,’ he says. 'Okay. So. So this is my stag-do?’

'Yes.’

Something innocently revelatory crosses his face, a young boy getting good news, and not for the first time, Nat wonders how different things could have been for him, given a different start in life. Getting angry about how life had treated him got her nowhere when they first met, and it’ll get her nowhere now, but sometimes she gets as far as typing Charles Bernard Barton into the search bar of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s databases before closing the window and walking away. Finding his brother will probably, with how Clint is, only make things worse. She’s a good friend – his best, probably – but sticking her oar in is not what’s needed in his past. She can help keep his future intact, help keep Laura safe, keep him safe. She can do that much. That’s within her powers.

'Cool,’ he sighs, and necks his pint. 'Hey, hey bar – um, hey.’

His Hungarian was crooked anyway, but now he just can’t even attempt. Nat watches him run through a roster of words in his head. He tries Italian. The barman looks at him like he’s mad.

‘Nat,’ he says, paps her face, ‘Nat can you tell him it’s my stag-do? We need – we need posh drinks. Like what the fatcats drink.’

Nat is a thousand percent sure that no one says fatcats any more.

‘What do you mean posh drink?’ she asks, and Clint looks at her. He’s just passed thirty, and some days he can pass for either side. Right now he looks old and tired and grumpy, but there’s something in his eyes, something genuinely happy, and it takes years off.

‘Champagne!’ he tells her, as though she’s the most ridiculous person he’s ever met. ‘What other posh drink is there?’

‘Clint, you don’t _like_ champagne.’

‘I’m already drunk,’ he tells her, ‘I’ll forget that by the time I’m drinking it.’

Nat is dubious, at best. It’s a generous “at best.” He’s clearly too drunk to even stand up, never mind be allowed to drink any more.

She buys him the champagne anyway.

Two glasses in, he passes out on the bar, snoring away. Nat breathes a sigh of relief, and looks at the bartender.

‘I’m sorry,’ she tells him, in flawless Hungarian, ‘he’s very excited to be getting married.’

‘It’s not a very good stag-do,’ the barman replies, ‘if it’s just you.’

‘It was a last minute thing,’ she says, ‘and he’s not a fan of parties. This is good enough for him. He won’t remember it in the morning anyway. Do you mind if I leave him here while I go get a cab?’

 ‘Of course not, it’s better that he’s inside where it’s warm.’

She thanks him with an unreasonably large tip, and heads outside to go and secure transport back to their hotel. On the way back to fetch her drunken, snoozing partner, she is waylaid by a few cronies.

When they smash through the bar’s doors in a screaming tangle of limbs and teeth marks, Clint doesn’t wake.

There’s something very comedic about Clint Barton, master assassin with hearing aids so advanced he can hear a pin drop at fifty paces, sleeping through a barroom brawl. Maybe in another universe, where all this was just a show, just a scene being played before a camera or a picture on a page in a comic book, they could laugh about it. She’ll laugh about it later. He won’t remember a damn thing.

She makes short work of the cronies, thanks the barman for his help, and hauls Clint upright.

He grumbles, tries to pull away from her, but his drunken ass is not in the least bit capable of holding his legs to his body, and he stumbles like an idiot for several steps before allowing her to drape his arm over her shoulders.

‘Have I told you that I love you?’ he asks, and she nods, takes the still-intact champagne bottle, puts it in his hand. It gives him something to focus on.

‘You have, many times. I think your wife might be getting jealous.’

She drags him out into the snowy street, and they make their way to the taxi waiting for them at the end of the road.

‘Laura?’ he asks, and then blows her off. ‘Naw, naw, she knows I ain’t like that. ‘Sides, you’re like. Like a daughter to me, y’know?’

Nat is tempted to get a separate cab, but she shoves his legs out of the way and climbs in, gives the address.

‘I know,’ she tells him, ‘and I appreciate it.’

‘Good!’ he chirps, and examines the champagne bottle like he’s just noticed it. ‘Nat,’ he whines, ‘Nat, why? I don’t _like_ champagne.’

‘Then don’t drink it,’ she says, and reaches for it, ‘I’ll have it.’

He clutches it to his chest and topples against the door behind him. ‘No,’ he says, and kicks her shin. ‘No, it’s mine, get your own.’

‘It’s Fury’s, technically,’ she reminds him. ‘Since it’s his tab.’

Clint’s laugh then is something pure evil, and Nat is ready to drag him by the armpits into the elevator because there’s no way he’ll make it to the hotel and still be conscious.

‘You and I are going to remember this _very_ differently,’ she tells him as he slumps into her, huffing out a breath before falling asleep.

In the morning, when Clint wakes, he puzzles over his hangover from the bed he’d woken face-first in, and asks if he embarrassed himself. Nat, sat at the desk and typing up her report on a laptop, doesn’t have the heart to tell him about the champagne.

* * *

_1998_

He’s not a crybaby by any stretch of the imagination; he breaks his bones at least once a week, and he barely even acknowledges the pain of it, where other agents weep. He watches sad movies with a straight face, attends funerals with a sad smile but dry eyes. It makes judging his feelings hard, and it takes Laura a long, long time to get Clint to talk to her, to tell her how he feels. He’s so used to cooping them up, to keeping his face straight and his voice level, that sometimes she can’t tell whether he’s happy or furious.

But he’s getting better.

Six months after Natasha – quickly becoming Nat, quickly becoming a firm addition in Clint’s life to the point that Laura is positive she’ll come home with him one day and that’ll be the end of that – is cleared for active duty, Clint comes home with a marvelling, soft expression on his face.

‘You alright?’ Laura asks him, and he offers her a smile.

‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘yeah. Just. Overwhelmed?’

‘Overwhelmed?’ she repeats, and Clint drops onto the couch, bag at his feet.

‘Yeah.’

He’s very spacey, she thinks, and locks the door he’d left open behind him, watches him stare off into space with that dopey, soft grin like he’s thinking of something nice and sweet. It’s been a while since she’s seen him like this, and she’s curious as to what’s caused it. Normally when he comes home, he’s wired to the point of cracking, but now he’s loose and fluid and wonderful.

‘What’s overwhelmed you, honey?’ she asks, and gets them a pair of beers from the fridge.

He settles back against the couch, making space for her to settle next to him with her legs in his lap like always, and they sit there quietly for a few minutes. He continues to stare off into space and grin like a dummy, and she lets him.

‘Clint?’ she asks, when he’s offered no answer to her question for half a beer.

‘Hm? Oh! Oh, it was – Nat came to see me today. I thought she was out doing an evaluation mission today, but maybe she got back early or something? She didn’t say.’

‘Yeah? How is she?’

He likes talking about Nat’s progress as a girl. She’s so _young_ , he’ll say, barely out of diapers, and it’s so nice to see her coming along the way she is.

‘I didn’t see any open sores today, so she’s sleeping good, at least,’ he says, ‘and she said she had lunch with Coulson, which is nice. She’s doing good, though. Got colour in her cheeks now.’

‘I’m glad,’ she says, and presses a kiss to his bicep, bunched tight as it rests around her shoulders. His shoulder rolls, but settles again. ‘Did anything else happen?’

‘Yeah,’ he nods, and colour creeps across his cheeks and down his neck. He’s adorable, truly. ‘Yeah, she, she said that it was – she gave me something today. A present.’

‘A present?’

Nat doesn’t seem the sort for spontaneous gift-giving, so Laura is intrigued.

‘Yeah. Yeah, it was – it’s Father’s Day today,’ he mumbles, and the colour deepens across his face, turning him lobster red. ‘She got me something.’

Laura’s heart does a dangerously affectionate thing, and she feels the coo building in her throat. Knowing it will only overwhelm him more, she clears said throat quietly, and says, ‘that’s nice.’

He tries to bite his grin back, but it doesn’t really work at all, and she smiles at him, even though he’s not looking. Honestly, he’s beautiful like this, so open with his feelings written all over his face, bright eyes and brighter smile.

‘Was it a nice gift?’ she asks, pushing as soft as she can.

‘Absolutely atrocious,’ he laughs, and tucks a hand under her outer knee to hold her steady as he leans down to rifle through his bag.

It takes a couple of yanks, but he manages to pull a Macy’s carrier bag free, bringing three odd socks and a broken watch with it.

‘Macy’s?’ Laura asks.

‘I wish. She tried so hard.’

Laura shifts her weight to look in the bag; there’s a card, garish and saccharine, but the message inside is heartfelt, honest, and Laura feels something twist in her belly; not for the first time, she wants one of her own, wants to have to write her baby’s message to their dad for them, cover their palms in paint and let them drool all over the card and post it to Clint, wherever he is. Not for the first time, she wants to have _children_ with this idiot bird under her legs, and she glances at him, looking faraway and fond, and wonders how he could ever believe he’d be a _bad_ dad.

Natasha Romanov, for all Laura’s heard of her, would not give Clint father’s day gifts as a joke if she didn’t have the genuine emotion there to fuel the want to tease him for it. The time he’s spent trying to make her something _more,_ make her something _great_ – how could he not see himself as a father?

‘That’s sweet,’ she says, ‘we’re keeping this card forever. I’ll remind her about it in ten years when she’s forgotten.’

‘She won’t forget. She never forgets.’

Laura hums, and digs through the bag; chocolates, a gift set of aftershave, a truly _ugly_ purple tie. She’s tried so hard, and Laura hasn’t met her yet, just seen her S.H.I.E.L.D. photo, but she kind of really adores her already, adores everything the sulky teenager is choosing to become.

By far the worst (best) present is the pair of truly ugly, old-fashioned dad slippers, in tartan with fur inside and elastic on the tongue.

‘God,’ she laughs, when she sees them, ‘even my dad doesn’t wear these yet! Oh my God, Clint. Oh my _God_ , please. She really meant this, she really tried. Oh my God.’

She’s gone, flat on the couch and laughing, hand pressed to her face as she cackles to herself. Clint lets her, pinches the inside of her thigh and studies the slippers; Nat’s left the price label attached. He’ll have to teach her to take that off.

‘Are you done?’ he asks, when Laura’s stopped laughing.

‘She really, really loves you,’ Laura manages to choke out, and starts laughing again.

Clint chooses to ignore her, and folds down over her legs to pull the slippers on, wiggling his toes before deeming them _really comfortable_.

(Twenty years later, and Nat sees him in a pair as he hops along the path to fight the chill as she lugs her case towards the door. She asks if she bought him a pair years ago, and he tells her to shut up, give him her case, get inside before she freezes, why can’t girls ever dress for the weather, honestly! She chooses not to remind him that he is outside in below-freezing temperatures in a t-shirt and thin cotton pyjama bottoms.)

* * *

_2012_

Laura finds him in the downstairs toilet, scrubbing at his hands with a nail brush. His cuticles are bleeding, nails bitten down to uneven, tattered stubs. The skin up to his wrists is red raw, and she can see the claw marks of his torn nails running up over his nape and around his neck above the low neck of his undershirt.

‘Honey?’

He goes still, agitated scrubbing stopping mid-motion. His shoulder is still hiked, elbow out. Water splashes against the porcelain, the only sound beside her heart pounding in her chest.

‘Go away,’ he grunts, and she stares at the back of his head for several long moments before he adds a tight, ‘please.’

Shutting the door behind her, she wedges herself in beside him, taking the nail brush from his fingers, setting it back down on the shelf before pulling a washcloth out of the pile. His gaze is too-blue, burning ice-hot against her temple as she wets it and wraps it carefully around his hands, making sure to cover his fingertips.

‘Don’t do this,’ she whispers, glances up and finds him inches from her. He’s too cold against her, and she knows he’s slipping. ‘Clint, stay with me, honey.’

He tries to yank his hands free, but she won’t let him, pressing closer, not that she really needs to; there’s barely any room with them both in here.

‘Look at me,’ she says, commands, and his lip curls, gaze determinedly turning _away_ from hers, towards their hands. ‘Clint.’

‘There’s blood,’ he whispers back, and jerks his hands again.

‘I know, dummy,’ she teases, presses a kiss to his bare shoulder as she peels the washcloth away. It’s got pinpricks of blood dotted across it from his cuticles, and the blood wells as soon as the pressure is gone, rinsed away by the water still coming from the tap. ‘You really scrubbed hard this time.’

‘No,’ he shakes his head, ‘no, not that blood. There was blood before.’

She smiles up at him, sighs and rubs her thumbs across his nails, feels the snags of keratin against her skin.

‘Honey, there’s – the blood’s been cleaned away. It went a long time ago. There’s nothing left but this blood here.’

 Six weeks is not a long time, but his hands couldn’t be cleaner.

‘No,’ he sighs, ‘no it’s still there. It’s there, Laura, look at it.’

She looks, but all she sees is the scratched, raw skin of his hands, wet through with bloody nails. Her skin is like a doll’s compared. Sighing, she ducks under his arm, presses flush and shuts the water off, pushing him back into the wall barely steps behind him.

‘Clint, listen. There’s no blood. You’ve washed it off. What happened was _not_ your fault. You weren’t in control, you can’t take responsibility for things you couldn’t stop. That’s like stopping the tides, stopping the sun from rising – you _can’t_! Please, Clint, just stay with me, don’t go again. Don’t go where I can’t follow you.’

He never remembers slipping, never remembers what happens between the blacking out and the coming to, just blinks stupidly at her as she cradles his face in both hands and studies his eyes like they’re crystal balls with all the universe’s secrets. He wonders if he has any secrets from her anymore, and clutches helplessly at the flecks of gold he can count in her eyes, counting them over and over and over again.

Seven hours, thirty-eight minutes and twenty seconds later, he wakes up in the creek, Laura cupping his cheek with one hand and clutching at his arm with the other.

* * *

_2008_

Fury hands him a piece of paper with co-ordinates on, and Clint frowns at him, but Fury just has that implacable look on his face again. Clint knows that he only has that look when he’s trying not to grin. Not just smile, but _grin_ , like he’s heard the funniest joke in the universe, but he’s in the solemnest situation. He hates that look.

So he goes and gets an SUV, signs it out, and off he goes. He recognises the rough area as Iowa, and for several minutes, he sits in the car on a lay-by, frowning at the co-ordinates. He plugs them – a couple of degrees off, in case anyone’s watching – into the GPS, and finds the best route. It’s not Waverly, he’s not being sent home. That’s okay, then. So far as he can tell, Fury’s sending him into _nowhere_.

Nowhere, once Clint arrives, turns out to be a farmhouse. It’s dilapidated, falling apart at the seams. It has a barn and a worn dirt track, and an almost-lake in the distance. There’s a piece of paper tacked to the door when he climbs the crumbling, rotten steps. One of them creaks underneath his weight, and he gets onto the next one sharpish.

 

BARTON, the note reads, in Fury’s uniform, but scrawling hand.

 

CALL THIS A LATE WEDDING PRESENT.

DON’T MALE HAWKS BUILD THEIR NESTS?

GET TO WORK.

 

‘No they don’t,’ Clint grumbles. ‘They build it together.’

He’s disgusted with himself for knowing that. It’s not his fault, he reasons. Sometimes Coulson – and now Nat, now that Nat’s in on this grand old joke too – spout what they like to call “fun hawk facts” at him during missions, completely without provocation. It’s taught him more about his namesake than he’d care to know.

The door is locked, but the key is under a dead potted plant in an old vase that crumbles when he nudges it out of the way. He unlocks the door, and the creak echoes across rotting floors, bounces off flaking paint and weeds. It stands empty, with broken windows and dust an inch or more thick, not even a rug or broken picture frame to suggest it was ever inhabited.

Honestly, he should probably have a mask on in here, the stench of black mould is incredible, and he figures there’s probably dead rats too.

‘Hello?’ he calls, in case there’s anyone in here.

The echo comes back to him and he heaves a sigh.

Over the next half an hour, he wanders through the house and picks at the various things that need doing. Where does he even begin, he wonders? He needs to gut the house, that’s for sure, gut it and start all over again. Get the – get the floors replaced, and the cladding redone. The roof needs replacing.

He checks the weather for the area on his phone; clear skies for a few days, and he wonders if he can get the roof done by himself.

After wandering around outside, he gets back into the SUV, and drives to Des Moines, where he calls Coulson from a payphone.

‘You’re in Iowa,’ Coulson says on pick-up. ‘Fury give you the farmhouse?’

‘You knew about the farmhouse?’ Clint asks, and checks the street around him.

‘Of course I knew, he’s been trying to make you go since 2005, but you’re always finding some reason to avoid it.’

‘Oh.’

‘Anyway, we’ve filed for you to have the week off, if you wanted to start on the house. I can come down and give you a hand, if you need.’

‘I think I’ll be alright,’ Clint says, and hangs up after bidding farewell.

He checks in at the safehouse, just so S.H.I.E.L.D. know where he is, and he heads to the nearest DIY store, buys everything he thinks he could possibly need to redo the roof. That has to be his first port of call. He’ll have to gut it, but he’s got to get the roof done.

It takes him three days to get it completely done, but then he gets started clearing out the interior, ordering new windows and frames in between clearing out rooms.

By the end of the week, half of the rooms are missing their floors, but all of the black mould has gone, and the worst of the smell has been aerated. It almost looks like the start of a project, and Clint eyes it all suspiciously before he heads back to New York.

When Laura asks about where he’s been, he lies, says he was on a mission. His next job is only three days. He tells her it’ll be a week. The last four days are spent at the farmhouse, and over the next few months, he starts rebuilding it from the ground up, room-by-room.

Sometimes he’ll come back from a mission to find the floor finished, or the plumbing finished. Once, he comes back to find the kitchen cabinets built and installed in completely the wrong place. He thanks Coulson for the effort, though.

A fortnight before Lila is born, Clint packs Laura and Coop into a car, and drives them to Iowa, drives them into the middle of nowhere, and Laura stares at the farmhouse, painted white and green with American flags hanging from the cladding, and then stares at her husband.

‘Did you _build us a house_?’ she asks, incredulous.


	16. Birthdays and Gifts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are birthdays, there are gifts, and there is social media.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HERE I AM

_2011_

Lila is three years and two days old, and Dad’s just come home. He kicks off his boots and dumps his bags and shrugs out of his coat as soon as he’s through the door, calling out to them.

‘Honey, I’m home! Sorry I’m late; there was trouble with the flights! Where’s my babies, huh? Where’re they at?’

She and Coop both give themselves whiplash lifting their heads to stare at each other, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, and they scramble to their feet, scattering crayons and bits of Lego all over the floor.

‘Daddy!’ they screech, and rush to meet him in the doorway to the lounge, all sticky-mouthed kisses and stickier-palmed hugs.

‘Eww, you’re all dirty,’ he laughs, but scoops them both up anyway, cradles them close.

He’s sun-warm and smells of dirt and iron and sweat, but it’s _Dad_ , and Dad always smells like something kind of icky.

‘You smell,’ Coop tells him, because Coop is rude.

‘I know,’ Clint says, ‘but I wanted to see you first. ‘Sides, young man, you need a bath, too. Your momma know you got – please say that’s chocolate – all down your front, look at this mess you’ve made.’

Momma appears in the kitchen, wearing jeans and one of Dad’s pullovers, and Lila thinks she’s _so_ pretty, and she knows Dad thinks so too, because he always looks at Momma the way Coop looks at the moon when it’s full, and she likes looking at him looking at her.

‘Momma knows,’ Momma says, with a wide smile like Coop’s. ‘And yes, it is chocolate. I made them cocoa, because we went for a walk, didn’t we, babies?’

Lila nods vigorously, and Dad tilts his head to get his chin out of the way.

‘We did,’ she agrees, ‘it was a nice walk. I fell in a puddle.’

Dad leans down to smell her hair, makes exaggerated noises. ‘Ugh!’ he cries, ‘I was wondering what I could smell! It’s a grubby Lila!’

 Momma laughs and comes to pet their hair, leaning over them to kiss Dad. Lila sticks her tongue out, and Coop tries to pinch it.

‘Coop!’ she whines.

‘Kids,’ Momma says, and they both go quiet, rest their heads on Dad’s shoulders and content themselves with Dad being there to rest their heads on.

Momma’s nice to cuddle, but her shoulders are bonier than Dad’s, and it’s not the same.

‘I think,’ Momma says after a minute or two of cuddles have passed, ‘that Dad needs to go and have a bath, because he smells _awful_ , and I think that you two need to go and wash your hands and faces, because it’s almost dinner time and you know what you can’t have at the table?’

‘Grubby hands and faces,’ they chime back, and Dad kisses both their hair before lowering them to the floor.

They rush off to the downstairs bathroom and Lila is too giddy at Dad being home to complain about having to wash her face. At least Coop helps her put the nice soap on her washcloth.

After they’ve eaten and Dad’s done the dishes and Momma’s put them away, she tells them that they can choose a movie, letting them rush off to the TV room to squabble over whether to watch _Robin Hood_ or _101 Dalmations_. Momma follows them in, but Dad is missing for a few minutes, comes in with a shiny pink bag.

‘Now,’ he says, sounding very serious indeed, and Lila almost stands up on the couch to peer around Momma and see what he’s got in his hand. ‘I have a bag here, addressed to Delilah Anne, but I don’t think I know a Delilah Anne.’

Lila _does_ stand up at that. ‘Me!’ she exclaims, jabs her thumbs into her sternum. ‘It’s me, I’m Delilah Anne!’

 Dad looks surprised, overly-so, pretending to be shocked, and he’s so silly, but she loves him so much.

‘Really?’ he asks, and peers at the label and then at her.

Dad’s handwriting is terrible, scrawling and smudged because he leans on the pen and she’s not good at writing with her left hand either, so she doesn’t know why he doesn’t just use his right like her and Coop and Momma.

‘Mm, I think you must be. This is for you then, sweetheart.’

When she reaches for the bag, he wraps his free arm around her, drawing her into another hug, and he smells much nicer now, like his soap and clean clothes and a little bit like Momma’s perfume, but he always smells like Momma’s perfume when he’s at home, because he’s always so close to Momma that he just absorbs the smell, like how her pillows smell like her shampoo after she’s had a bath. She’s happy to hug him back, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding him tight.

‘Happy birthday, sweetheart,’ he says, just to her, in her ear, all Dad-warm and accent-soft. ‘I’m sorry I missed it, I tried to get home in time.’

‘You’re here now,’ she says, sage and it makes him laugh, purse his lips for a kiss that she’s happy to give him, sloppy and wet, and he makes an exaggerated kissing noise when he pulls away.

‘I am,’ he says, ‘and this is for you.’

He sits on the floor with her when she slides off the couch to open it, and she stares at the card for almost a solid minute. It’s got a purple bird and a little pink bird and he’d been crashing through the window of a card store wrestling his target when he saw it and thought of her. He thinks that it probably made the cashier’s day, witnessing a fight like something out of an action movie getting broken up by the Men in Black, only for one of the participants of said fight (the winner, Clint might add!) picking out a card.

‘For my daughter,’ he’d said, with a beaming, bleeding grin. ‘She’s three on Friday.’

(He’s pretty sure the card is really meant for a mother to her daughter, but it’s a _purple_ bird.)

‘ _Dad_ ,’ Lila says, and looks up at him at last.

He smiles at her, and she grins back, the same grin but missing teeth and with more puppy-fat on her cheeks.

‘Thanks _,’_ she says, and pulls the box in towards her, running her fingers over the paper for a few moments.

‘You’re not supposed to admire the paper,’ Momma teases.

‘It’s Scooby-Doo,’ Lila tells her, and points at the diamond with Velma in it. ‘It’s you.’

‘Clint,’ Momma chides, but Dad just grins up at her, looking pleased with himself.

‘Hey, now,’ he says, ‘I’ve got two bruised ribs and a migraine. Don’t you “Clint” me, ma’am.’

Lila knows that migraines are _really_ bad headaches and that Dad can’t see straight with one and that everything in his head _hurts_ , but he’s still sat here with her and it’s so nice, she thinks.

So she digs her fingers into the folds of the paper and pulls, just enough to get it open, and she stares. It’s a pretty little white box, with a little gold frame around it and a lockable clasp.

Her hands, summer-gold still and small and spread wide, touch the box, which is as big as two whole hand spans, running over it with gentle reverence. Dad waits her out as she touches the box and draws the shape of the gold square on top and gapes at it, and eventually he tells her to open it.

It takes her a moment of fumbling with the clasp – Dad tells her to push the lock to the right, and she gasps when the clasp pops up – before she’s lifting the lid, and she squeals in delight at what greets her.

‘Swan Lake,’ Momma says, and gives Dad a soft smile.

‘Swan Lake,’ he agrees, and barely takes his eyes off Lila to smile back at her.

Lila watches the little ballerina, pink and pretty and poised so perfectly, spinning in place. She rocks a little to the music, letting the same twenty seconds of little tinny notes play out over and over until the music box finally winds down, and then, like she’s snapping out of a daze, she’s slamming the lid shut and leaping over the box to land in Dad’s lap, pressing his face with both hands and smothering his mouth and nose and cheeks in sloppy girl-kisses.

The momentum of Lila throwing herself on him rocks Dad back and he falls with a thud onto the carpet, laughing up a storm at Lila’s kisses.

‘You like it then?’ he asks, between one kiss and the next.

‘Uh-huh. Lots and lots and lots.’

When Dad’s read her a bedtime story that night, and she’s just about to fall asleep, she asks him to wind the box up again, and he nods, leans over to kiss her temple before going to do so. Swan Lake fills her bedroom, soft and sweet, and he kisses her forehead again before heading out the door.

A routine develops; Dad winds the music box before he leaves the room after story time, and in the morning, he comes to wake her, fingers behind her ear and a tease ready for her drool-covered cheeks.

But then one morning, he isn’t there to wake her, and it’s Momma’s fingers in her hair that wake her.

‘Dad?’ she asks.

‘He’s had to go into work,’ Momma says, ‘something’s come up.’

When Momma goes to leave after a bedtime story that night, Lila doesn’t ask her to wind the music box. Momma offers, but Lila shakes her head.

‘Dad,’ she says, ‘just Dad.’

Momma nods, and wakes in the middle of the night to Lila climbing into bed with her.

‘Couldn’t sleep?’ she asks, and Lila nods, wriggles until she’s under Momma’s arm.

When Dad comes back, he wakes her not with fingers behind her ear and a tease about her drool-covered cheeks, but with the tinny notes of Swan Lake, the box wound as tight as he can get it. She blinks at the box, half-lit by the moonlight coming through the open curtains, and smiles, presses her face into the pillow and watches through cotton-sticky eyes as the ballerina pirouettes so nicely.

* * *

_2016_

Clint’s phone beeps once, twice, three times.

‘Go away,’ he grunts, but wriggles to get it out of his pocket.

Laura complains about being jostled, and he ignores her, because his phone is beeping half a dozen more times, and there’s only so much he thinks he can take.

‘Who the hell?’ he asks, because he doesn’t recognise the number. ‘Do you know that number?’

Laura looks at it, and reads it a couple of times, and then shakes her head.

‘No,’ she says, ‘no, I’ve not seen it before.’

Clint opens the messages, all twelve of the fucking things, and stops.

‘Are you joking?’ he asks, and Laura pushes a little more upright to look at the screen.

‘Look at that,’ she coos, ‘he’s trying so hard, oh my God, look at how hard he tried.’

‘How did he _know_?’ Clint demands of the phone, and his wife just starts to laugh, and then she’s laughing and she’s not stopping, and Clint pushes her over onto the other side of the couch.

She goes over, cackling, and covers her face in her hands.

‘He wants,’ she gasps between laughs, ‘ha-ha, he really wants to – he wants to be a stray. Oh my God. A stray. Ha-ha-ha. He tried so hard.’

Clint shoves her legs off of his lap, and they go off the couch, the rest of her quickly following, and she just lies on the floor and continues to laugh.

Clint takes his time spelling out a rude reply, and sends it with an angry jab of his finger.

The barrage of replies is immediate.

‘Fuck off, Wade,’ he whispers. Laura has barely stopped laughing.

‘Just make him a shirt,’ she says, some ten minutes later, when the messages have been unceasing, and Clint is jabbing his finger more and more. ‘He wants to be a stray, let him.’

‘Laura,’ Clint says, very seriously. ‘He knows about the farm. He knows we’re here. He shouldn’t know.’

‘I read the articles about it,’ she says, wiping her eyes and she’s more serious now, because her husband is stressed, and she’s learnt that his family’s safety is the one thing she can’t make light of, ‘on the Avengers forum. Everyone thinks he’s mad, but he did practically go to war to save his girlfriend. And the X-Men like him.’

‘Colossus likes him,’ Clint corrects, and opens one of the pictures again.

It’s Deadpool, in his full red-and-black suit, thumbs-up pointed to the mirror he’s taken the selfie in, wearing a homemade Barton Strays jersey. It’s the wrong shade of purple, and he’s stapled three pink glittery sixes to the front.

‘He stole those from a girl’s birthday party, look at them.’

Laura gets her feet under him and shoves with all her strength, upending her husband onto the floor.

‘Get him a shirt next time you’re in town,’ she says, ‘and just mail it to him. It’ll make his day, and you’ll feel pleased to have another baby under your wing, and if he wants to come to the farm, he’s going to come whether you let him or not, just like Tony comes whether you want him to or not, and all the rest. Just – Clint, the forums – he’s you, if you were an immortal, slightly-more-batty masked vigilante. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do half of what he did if you and I were in his and his girl’s positions.’

‘I’d never have let you get captured in the first place,’ he grunts, and climbs back onto the couch, throwing his phone onto the coffee table and wriggling his way under her arms to sprawl out on her chest.

‘You’re a heavy old man, you know that?’ she asks.

‘Mm,’ Clint replies, and after several minutes of silence, he adds, ‘I’ll get him a shirt.’

Laura strokes his hair and doesn’t reply, but Clint can feel her smile in her chest.

* * *

_2012_

The interview’s paused for a toilet break and so on. Tony’s disappeared to the bathroom, Steve’s fumbling with his phone, and Bruce is doing his best to help. Nat’s filing her nails, feet up on the table, and Clint’s got his boots hooked over the edge of the table, arms folded across his chest and head on Nat’s shoulder. He’d be doing a very good impression of being asleep if her microphone wasn’t picking up on him humming Hollaback Girl to himself.

For the most part, the reporters aren’t really paying attention to them, checking their emails and starting on their reports, but then Clint’s phone, on the desk, screeches with a text tone that’s too loud to be entirely polite. He opens one eye, and then the other, and sighs, drops his feet to the floor to get the phone, and he pulls a face.

‘Aww, pills no,’ he says, seemingly unaware he’s right next to his microphone as he says it. ‘Nat, did you bring my pills, it’s already twelve-thirty. Where’s my day going? It’s twelve-thirty already, I’m getting so _old_.’

‘In my bag,’ she says, and shows no sign of moving, but there’s something of a smile playing on her mouth. ‘You know you just announced to the room you’re on medication.’

Clint’s voice fades as he ducks under the table, but most of the reporters can hear him say, ‘of course I’m on medication, I’ve been clinically dead six times. I can’t find them, why’s your bag so big?’

‘Because I have to carry all of your garbage, too. Zip pocket at the back, they’re in that pill box you gave me from home, the one with the glittery arrow.’

‘Glittery arrow,’ Clint snorts, and finds the box in question.

It’s one Lila decorated for him when he explained to her that Daddy was on a lot of brightly coloured skittles because he was in a lot of pain, and no sweetheart, you can’t have any of them. She’d said, when she presented him with the set of three – one for every set of pills, morning, noon, and night – that she didn’t want him to be sad about having to eat the not-skittles.

 He checks that he has all of the pills he needs to take, and sends a photo of them to Laura to prove that he acknowledged the message and didn’t just read it. Then he steals Nat’s water, because he drank all of his, and down the pills a handful at a time.

Shuddering at the aftertaste, he finds the Hubba Bubba at the bottom of Nat’s bag, and steals a piece.

Then he happens to glance up and see the reporters staring at him.

‘What?’ he asks, but the interview hasn’t recommenced yet, so they can’t ask him anything, even though the cameras are still rolling and the interview is still being streamed internationally, though on most channels, they’re playing adverts now.

As soon as the interview starts up again, a hand shoots into the air.

‘For Barton,’ the reporter says, ‘what were those pills you just took?’

‘Medication,’ he grits out. ‘For a load of problems I have to deal with. I’ve been a – a – Nat?’

‘Secret Agent,’ she replies, bored. ‘You like to pretend you’re a hotter James Bond.’

‘I am a hotter James Bond,’ he assures her. ‘Well, anyway, I’ve been doing this for twenty years. I think I’ve broken every bone in my body at least once. I once broke my spine in thirteen places. I’ve been clinically dead six times that I remember, but I’m sure there are a couple I don’t. I had an abusive childhood, and then I came into this job, where I get mind-tricked into being a bad guy until it gets beaten out of me.

‘I think I have brain damage, too, from a certain someone hitting me really hard over the head.’

‘You were biting me,’ Nat reminds him.

‘So were you! Look at this scar, that’s your fault.’

‘You burnt yourself on Christmas lights; that was nothing to do with me.’

Clint sniffs and turns his face away, but there’s a small smile on his lips.

Sometime later, Laura sends him links to a few forums and articles, heavy analysis of what possible medication he’s on, the things he could have been up to that broke his spine so badly and the experimental surgery he must have had to rectify the supposed problems he’s had. People have also been digging for his past, but all they’ve managed to find are some tangential connections to Iowa and nothing concrete. While his past and his history haven’t been wiped from public record, there are enough Bartons out there, and he’s not the only Clint Barton to have been born in the seventies, that there’s no concrete proof he’s _that_ Clint Barton from _that area_ of Iowa, born to _those_ parents.

Still, not nice, seeing the article about his parents death there, plain as day.

He sighs, and closes the app, rests his phone on his chin, stares at the ceiling, and wonders, not for the first time, if his ma would be proud of what he’d become. She’d always been worried he’d get himself into too much mischief for his bones to handle. But he supposes it’s too late to be wondering about that now.

* * *

_2016_

Tony’s performing some minor outside maintenance on the Tower when F.R.I.D.A.Y. says, ‘Miss Potts on the line, sir.’

He brings her through, and Pepper’s frown appears in the corner of his HUD.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asks, because that’s the Barton Frown. He’s grown very familiar with that frown.

‘It’s – the principal just called me,’ she says, ‘Lila’s been fighting again, but he’s talking about suspension because of her lies?’

It’s framed as a question, as though Tony would know the slightest thing about it.

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ he says.

‘I know,’ she assures him. ‘I’m just – I don’t understand. He was talking about an assignment Lila did the other week, and how she’s been causing trouble ever since. She got a very low grade on it because she wasn’t truthful, and I’m stuck in board meetings all day. I don’t know if you want to –‘

She stops, and he can see her shrug in the visual.

‘I’m on my way,’ he promises, and pushes off from the wall, spiralling to right himself as he zooms off towards the school.

It’s a couple of hours even at top speed, because Clint had agreed to the whole school thing on the grounds that the kids stayed in Iowa, and that was fair enough, it wasn’t fair to make them travel _ridiculous_ distances. So it takes Tony a while to fly over, and he talks to Pepper for the time she’s available.

‘Please,’ she says, earnest as ever, lips twisted in that familiar way. ‘Don’t cause a scene. I don’t think most of the staff even _knows_ that they know you.’

‘I’m pretty sure that’s part of the problem,’ Tony hums, and does a casual roll, the way he does when he’s considering. ‘Lila’s causing trouble ‘cause they’re calling her a liar, and they’re calling her a liar ‘cause she’s saying she knows me and you personally. You sent that essay over yet?’

‘No,’ she says, ‘because I’ve been sat here talking to you. I can’t do both, Tony.’

‘Now I know where Lila learnt to lie.’

‘You’re only a footnote in her essay, you know,’ Pepper says then. ‘She mentions you as someone she could have talked about. She doesn’t look up to you. I think it’s because you’re short.’

‘I am _not_ ,’ Tony huffs, and swerves between trucks on an overpass. They beep at him. He beeps back.

‘Did you just say “beep, beep” unironically?’ Pepper asks.

‘No.’

Pepper hums, and Tony tells her he’s going to hang up on her.

‘Look, if you’re sore about the essay, I can ask Lila to rewrite it and make it all about you.’

‘I am not sore about the essay,’ he says with a sudden bark of laughter. ‘I’m just – concerned. She’s getting suspended for fighting and she’s eight.’

‘Seven.’

‘Same difference. I just saw the Welcome to Iowa sign, so I’m almost there.’

Pepper looks away from her screen for a second, and then makes a strangled noise. ‘Tony! I was supposed to be in a meeting an hour ago!’

He laughs, loud and victorious and he knows she likes him laughing like that, because it’s genuine and he knows he doesn’t laugh so much these days, and hangs up on her.

‘F.R.I.D.A.Y.? Can you send her a message telling her I love her?’

‘Yes, sir,’ F.R.I.D.A.Y. replies. ‘Is there anything else?’

‘No, I think that’s it for now, I’ll let you know if I need anything.’

F.R.I.D.A.Y. disappears from his HUD, and leaves him alone in the suit.

The kids’ school is a relatively quiet one; after years of near solitude broken up by absolutely no peer interaction, everyone (especially Pepper, who had had stacks of prospectuses on her desk for weeks, slowly getting thinned out with each subsequent read-through) had been a little reluctant to dump them in the middle of a student body in the multiple hundreds. But it’s not a dead zone either. Just enough of a student body to give the hawkbabies a better social life, but not completely overwhelm them.

Tony gets the impression, from their report cards, that they don’t like people all that much. He understands completely.

It must be between classes, a break or something, because students are milling about in the courtyard when he approaches.

‘F.R.I.D.A.Y. which one’s the principal’s car?’

‘The red Audi, sir. Kansas plates.’

He lands on it, and dents the roof.

The screaming is immediate, but he expected that. Pulling the helmet off, he hops down off the car, making sure to dent the bonnet in the process, and strides to the nearest adult, who is alternatively gawking and trying to hold the excited children back.

‘Principal’s office,’ he says. ‘Where am I going?’

She blinks, and then lets go of one of the children to point.

‘Through those doors, to your left, all the way to the end of the corridor. There’s another set of doors, and it’s labelled.’

‘Thanks,’ he says, tucks his helmet under his arm and clanks off towards the doors.

Before he reaches it, the doors burst open and Lila comes through, yelling ‘Uncle Tony!’ at the top of her lungs.

The leaping hug is coming whether he wants it or not, so he braces himself and lets it happen. Cooper is quick to follow her, looking like he was trying to keep her back, and the principal – according to F.R.I.D.A.Y. who runs facial recognition on him as soon as he appears through the door and murmurs in his earpiece – follows them, looking harried.

‘Principal Robinson? Tony Stark.’

‘I know,’ Robinson says, looking a bit dumbfounded. Lila is still pressed against the suit, holding as tight as she probably can.

F.R.I.D.A.Y. tells him that the structural integrity of his midsection is down to thirty-five percent.

He takes his earpiece out, and lets it hang around his neck as he carefully peels Lila away from him.

‘Is there somewhere we can talk, Principal?’ Tony asks, ‘Can I call you Trevor? I get enough formality at work. This is a social call.’

Trevor looks at the crowd forming nearby, the gawking children, and the staff coming out investigate the screaming and the crashing sound of Principal Robinson’s car getting written off by _Iron Man_. He flushes an ugly puce colour. Lila takes Tony’s free hand and refuses to let go. He looks at it, and then looks at her.

She looks back with That Look. He knows that look, has seen Clint crumble under it, and looks away before she casts her spell. He’s had enough of witches. He doesn’t need Lila doing it too.

(He doesn’t let go of her hand.)

Cooper lopes along beside him, already at his shoulder, and Tony glances at him as they walk back towards Trevor’s office. He’s frowning, head down, but Tony can see the reddish stain of bruise-to-be on his cheek. It’s not like Cooper to fight, and Tony feels something like _anger_ boil in his gut. Fighting has always been Lila’s bag; jumping on her Uncle Steve and her big brothers (and God, didn’t her flying leaps from the furniture onto Barnes terrify everyone in the immediate vicinity, but Barnes just took it with a laugh and an easy pull of her from his back with a tug around her ankle that made her cackle) to play fight, and taking after her dad in never knowing when to quit had become her remit at school. Pepper had been called half-a-dozen times last term alone about Lila picking fights with the other students.

But for _Cooper_ to get into a fight?

Tony is _seething_ , and wonders if it’s too late to get Pepper out here too.

‘Right,’ he says, as soon as the door is shut behind them. He lets go of Lila’s hand, clenches his fists, levels his stare. ‘Right, let’s get one thing straight right now. This? These kids? I see a bruise on them again and I am shutting this school down on the _spot_.’

Trevor swallows. Tony takes a deep breath, plasters a charming smile on his face, and gestures the kids into the chairs before putting the suit on standby. Rolling his shoulders, he helps himself to a seat on the arm of Lila’s chair, folds his arms.

Trevor can’t look away from the suit. Tony clicks his fingers.

‘My face is here, Trevor. You called Miss Potts, to discuss behaviour? I’m here. Let’s discuss behaviour.’

‘Oh, yes, right. Right, yes. Um. Well, Lila’s been – she’s been fighting a lot, Mr Stark. Picking fights with other students and arguing with teachers.’

‘Lila?’ Tony asks.

‘I did it,’ she says, ‘’cause they keep callin’ me a liar, and I’m not a liar, Uncle Tony. I’m not a liar.’

‘I know,’ he says, and looks back to Trevor, the other side of his desk, like it’ll protect him.

Anger has never really been Tony’s thing. He’s too flippant for anger. He looks at Cooper’s black eye, and thinks about the black eye Laura’s going to give him when she sees it. He doesn’t remember the last time he was this angry about something not directly related to Pepper.

‘Fighting of any sort is unacceptable in a school environment,’ Trevor says.

Tony clenches his fists in his T-shirt, reminds himself that assault is a criminal offence.

‘So is bullying according to your school’s motto, and yet I’m here and all I'm hearing is my niece being bullied.’

‘Um, you – can you clarify that?’ Trevor asks, ‘the, the niece thing. Lila has been saying that she knows you – and obviously she does! – but she refers to the Avengers by familial nicknames.’

‘Because we are her – and Coop’s – family. I _am_ Uncle Tony, and Captain America is Uncle Steve, and so on and so forth.’ He waves a hand. ‘Whether I’m her biological uncle or a family friend? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she’s being bullied for telling the truth, just because the truth is a _little_ fantastical. Like real life superheroes isn’t fantastical enough!’

He takes another breath. Focusing is hard. He hasn’t had to focus for a while. Left alone in his lab as he has been, he’s not had to think about words. Words had come as a secondary thought. The people he spoke to had been used to his thought processes, his verbal vomit, every word getting thrown out without consideration and then made redundant by all the words that followed. They’d been used to it, had been able to pick out the information they needed. But this is different, this is something more delicate.

‘She was fighting – ‘

‘She was defending herself against an entire school against her!’ Tony snaps, and is on his feet and halfway across the desk before he realises what, exactly, it is that he’s done. Trevor leans back, eyes wide.

Tony takes a deep breath, straightens himself. Lila and Coop both fidget in their seats.

‘Listen,’ he says, ‘listen. She’s been called a liar by teachers, right? A liar. Kids have been, picking on her. Starting fights. I know Lila wasn’t taught to start them. She was taught to end them, non-violently when she can. She’s never provoked to violence at home.’

‘Where is home?’ Trevor asks.

‘Nothing to do with you,’ Tony replies, and bares his teeth with his smile. ‘Home is irrelevant, because all of the trouble is being caused here. Your students and your staff are the problem, Trevor. School’s supposed to be a safe place. She’s seven. You’re suspending a seven year old for being bullied.’

‘She broke a student’s nose.’

‘He called Momma names,’ she mumbles.

Coop pipes up with, ‘wasn’t even about the Avengers. He said his momma made the best cocoa in the world, and Lila said that’d be hard when our momma did it best, and he said Momma was probably dead and she was just dreaming like she dreamt up the rest, so Lila shoved him, and he pushed her over, so she punched him in the face.’

Tony tries not to be proud.

‘Did your dad teach you how to punch?’ he asks her, and she flushes.

‘He taught me to aim down, so I don’t knock their nose up into their brain,’ she says, with a demonstrated swing at nothing, ‘so I don’t kill them.’

Trevor goes a bit green around the edges. Tony has seen Clint kill HYDRA soldiers that way, and wonders when he got to be so blasé about it.

‘You shouldn’t have punched him,’ Tony says.

‘Dare you to tell Momma that he said her cocoa wasn’t the best,’ Lila grumbles.

‘Point taken.’

‘Mr Stark,’ Trevor says, and Tony feels any calmness drip off of his shoulders.

‘Yes?’

‘Lila is a threat to the other students, assaulting them at the slightest provocation. We can’t have a student like that.’

Tony puts his earpiece back in. ‘F.R.I.D.A.Y., can you patch Steve through to the suit for me?’

Lila laughs, and Trevor looks concerned. Tony and Coop just sit there and wait.

‘Stark, this better be good,’ Steve says, when the call has connected.

‘Oh it is,’ Tony assures him. ‘I'm sat in the principal’s office. He wants to kick Lila out for punching a kid because he called her a liar.’

Steve draws a breath, and Tony laces his fingers across his belly, smiles. Trevor looks a minute away from wetting himself.

(Lila’s suspension is lifted, and a school-wide email is sent around to inform all teachers that they are to be extra vigilant about the Harcourt children’s safety, both in the classroom and the playground. It does not take long for blurry snapchats of Lila holding Iron Man’s hand to start circulating the internet. Laura takes great delight in it, and Tony gets one of the blurriest frames of video blown up and put on the wall of his office as a centrepiece. Pepper does nothing to stop him, because Pepper knows better, but she starts dabbling in educational law all the same.)

* * *

 

_2004_

He sends her the address for the base, because he’ll be here for as long as the mission takes, and he doesn’t want to be here for six weeks, let alone six months, without getting his hands on his favourite coffee blend and at least three Twizzlers. Go-Gurt is out of the question, but Twizzlers, nah, he can get them. At least, he can if Laura sends him some. Hence the address.

The first couple of care packages come packed with the usual care package goods; sweets, trashy magazines and thin books to pass the time, newspaper clippings of funny stories and photos of the dog, her perfume sprayed across the entirety of the box, soaked thick into the small, inexpensive teddy bear she probably picked up from the Dollar Tree for this very purpose.

(He shoves it in the closest pocket of his fatigues to his nose, and inhales every chance he gets. He writes back and tells her to just send a bottle of perfume to him, because the fierce heat of the sun is drowning out the smell of the bear with the smell of his sweat. She replies with a too idle, _that’s such a shame, I like it when you get sweaty,_ and really that just makes the heat _more_ intolerable. In the next package is a sample bottle of her perfume, stained with a lipstick kiss and a, _be considerate of your squad, they don’t need to see you jerk off. It’s hot to watch but it’s for my eyes only xxx_.

 He has never loved her more.)

Once, he complains that he has to be undercover. He fits in well in the army, can understand why Barney wanted to join. It’s not like S.H.I.E.L.D., not really, but it’s familiar in a way. Easy. He spends more nights awake helping with nightmares than he does dreaming himself, but he’s managed worse tasks on less sleep. When he does sleep, he dreams of his bed, of Laura warm and soft against his side, Lucky huffing in his sleep at their feet. He dreams of Manhattan’s buzz. He dreams of an easier life. It only makes him sick once, and then he settles into the routine of it, and no one would ever suspect anything.

But he complains, because he’s good with guns, has as accurate an aim with a gun as he does with his bow, but guns are noisy and cumbersome and take effort to maintain. Sand gets fucking everywhere, and he’s ruined two rifles already. He misses his bow. Laura sends a smaller care package this time, teases with a mini bow and arrow set, plastic with suckers for arrowheads. The squad gets a kick out of trying to shoot each other. They don’t let Clint join in, but Clint is happy just to watch them suck at his defining trait.

A care package arrives without warning in the middle of the night.

‘Sergeant Cross?’ comes a voice hissed across the shaft of moonlight let in by the open door.

Clint is awake and on his feet in seconds, and pads barefoot and sand-quiet to the door.

‘What is it?’ he asks.

‘This arrived with the last drop-off,’ the runner whispers, hands him a box. ‘We just got it in the midnight delivery. Your girl must have bought a lot of sweets if they didn’t fit in one box.’

Clint takes the box, and stares at it. What the hell had Laura sent him now? He wasn’t expecting a package until next week at the _earliest_ , and that was being generous, because she had to get his email, and then get the box packed and shipped, and she’s got more important things to do than pander to him and his sobbing about home comforts like Twinkies and non-pulpy orange juice.

He thanks the runner and retreats to his bunk. One of the squaddies rolls over and starts snoring. Clint sits on his bunk, box in his lap. The return address has been scratched out, illegible beneath the black biro. He turns the box to the light; he can just about make out the S.H.I.E.L.D. emblem in the scribbles.

‘You fucker,’ he whispers, and turns the box over again, finds the tape and digs his nails in. It gives, and he pulls the box open. Inside, collapsed down with the string neatly coiled and held in place with a neon purple hair band, is his bow.

 _Sorry_ , reads the note, hastily scrawled at a slant in a dying pen, _couldn’t bend arrows to fit. Can you make? If not will try to send. Have two dozen here._

There’s a lipstick kiss, and the note smells of her perfume.

Clint draws a breath. He’s impossibly glad that he married her.

He finds time in the morning to get access to a computer, and he sends an email to her work address. _Can make don’t send_ , he sends, and then, thirty seconds later, _fucking love you_.

She sends back a greater than three, and he carries it in his heart for the next three encounters.

He takes out the target with an arrow fashioned from an empty shell hammered into a V with the old-fashioned application of a heavy rock and a stick he happened across while on patrol. The fletching was made from a single feather, and he hasn’t had to make an arrow for at least three years. It’s the shittiest job he’s done since he made his first. It’s the only one he’s got.

He gets the target in the eye and he drops like a sack of potatoes.

(Fury is waiting for him when he reaches the hangar, and he makes a show-and-tell of chewing him out publicly for defying instruction and giving the op away with his archery shenanigans. There’s pride in his eye, though, and there’s a bouquet of Laura’s favourite flowers on the coffee table when he gets in.)

* * *

_1990_

Clint spends his nineteenth birthday huddled down the side of a dumpster in an alley behind a restaurant in a threadbare windbreaker and fingerless gloves. There’s no snow here, too warm from the residual heat of the kitchen, and too sheltered by the high rooftops, but it’s still cold, and he can’t stop shivering. His socks are wet, and he doesn’t remember the last time he ate a warm meal.

In the morning, the city cleaners find him and turf him out with a smack upside the head. He turns his collar up, braves the freezing air to try and move on. He has no idea where he’s going. Barney has been gone for years; for all Clint knows, he could be dead. How could they, the suits with briefcases and bland looks on their faces, how could they find the last Barton to tell him his brother was dead? They’d run away to the circus years ago, and years later, there was still no effort spent to find them. Who would know to look for Clint in an alleyway in Topeka?

But he figures – he figures, he’ll head to the capital. He’ll head to D.C. and he’ll find the FBI and he’ll get them to find Barney. If anyone can find his brother, it’ll be them.

He considers, once or twice, as he walks for miles between cities, that maybe he’ll walk into a recruitment office and walk out with his 1A. Maybe. He could try and find Barney that way. He’d said, when he left, that he was going to join the army, after all.

(The army is not for him, but he doesn’t know that yet. He wouldn’t get a 1A, not with his health the way it is.)

He commits petty crimes to get by. Steals whatever food he can fit in his pockets on the sly, and only once a city does he break into a store to get clothes. He hits the big brands, the ones that won’t miss a winter coat, or a pair of jeans. He doesn’t remember, a few weeks later, where he got the backpack from, but he’s got enough underwear and socks to last him a week at a time, and he’s done worse for himself that dry his boxer shorts in the hand dryer of a mall bathroom.

It’s not often he has to, but he gets into fights. The relative pettiness of his crimes won’t keep him out of a cell if he gets caught, but he won’t let serious crimes go on under his nose if he can do something about it. He’s tall, but thin, losing weight too fast to be healthy, but he fights all the same, scrappy and quick. Once he catches an attempted arsonist and has to dunk himself in a river to wash the gasoline off before he catches fire. Too many times, he catches an attempted rapist, and he breaks a knuckle knocking one guy’s teeth out.

He wishes he could do more. But he doesn’t have much of a moral high ground to work from.

He steals a marker pen from a grocery store, and the next attempted rapist he stops, after breaking the bastard’s face, he writes his crime across his forehead in marker, in big, angry letters so that when the police find him in the morning, in the alleyway with his broken nose still bleeding, they’ll know what he did.

(Not that he knows it, not yet, but these little acts of decency, of – of _protection_ , of _defence_ – they get S.H.I.E.L.D.’s attention. Specifically, they get Phil Coulson’s attention, and he begins charting a path of crimes across the country, begins plotting Clint’s suspected path. They lost him when the circus went up in flames, metaphorically speaking, but perhaps, Coulson thinks, perhaps this is the Barton boy with the eyes like storms and the aim sure as truth.)

Once, he almost gets caught picking the lock to a clothing store. He hadn’t expected to see anybody in the alleyway, and the stumbling drunk looking for somewhere quiet to piss startles him. He draws his hood up, tugs it as low over his face as he can get it, and figures he’ll find a coat with a deeper hood in the next city, because his priority here is new boots.

The drunk is gone when he leaves, but he takes a different route out of the alleyway anyway, clambering up the fire escape to pick his way across enough rooftops that he’ll be in a different block on the next fire escape.

Three cities over, he gets into trouble with the police, and runs. He runs and runs and runs, keeps running until he can’t take another step. The police have apparently given up – maybe he’ll mention them to the FBI, when he gets to DC and has found his brother, maybe he’ll tell them that the police in Frankfort are fucking useless – and he stops running, takes a few minutes to just breathe. He’s getting more and more unfit as time passes; he’s struggling to breathe now, his legs jelly beneath him. Six months ago, he could have run the distance without even breaking a sweat.

He supposes that’s the lack of food.

Hands on his knees and doubled over, he breathes and breathes and breathes, and eventually manages to get his heart out of his eardrums. Straightening up, he shakes his still-jelly legs out, and starts walking.

Three blocks later, he’s hit by a jeep swerving off the road, like it’s coming straight for him.

He goes to the nearest walk-in to make sure he’s not ruptured anything, because going over the front of a jeep is not the nicest thing he’s ever experienced, but other than a few broken ribs and a bruised face, he’s made it out miraculously. They try to send him to the ER but he gets patched up, pays with a stolen credit card, and heads out on his way. Every step for a week after is agony. But he keeps walking because he has no choice.

S.H.I.E.L.D. are catching up, and it doesn’t take long before, in a quiet side-street in a nondescript city someway south of New York City, a sleek black SUV rolls slowly alongside the kerb Clint is following. A window rolls down, and Phil Coulson leans out, arms folded, and expression cheery.

‘Hello, Clint,’ he says, and has the decency to sigh when Clint turns tail and legs it back the way he came, ducking into the nearest alley and scrambling up the fire escape.

But he is worn out, exhausted from so long on the road, and Phil doesn’t take long to catch up to him, practically beats him onto the rooftops, and waits for him to get his breath back before offering him the same card he’d offered his brother nearly a decade ago.

Clint has a better reaction to it, but not by much. He only tears the card once. Phil counts it as a success, and has Clint brought in for a good meal and a bath or three.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Running (Home)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4276578) by [ScarfLoor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarfLoor/pseuds/ScarfLoor)




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